Mexico’s Opposition Party Stalls Energy Reform for Political Change

Amid charges of political arm-twisting, an opposition party has held passage of legislation vital to an overhaul of Mexico’s energy sector hostage to its demands for a political revamping.

The tactic by the opposition center-right National Action Party threatens to delay for weeks – or even months – enactment of a plan to open the energy sector to foreign investment, crucial to economic revitalization.

“This isn’t blackmail,” Sen. Jorge Luis Preciado, the head of the party’s faction in the Senate, told foreign correspondents. “This was agreed upon from the beginning: First this, then that.”

His party’s . . .