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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Decision Looms on Arresting Top Mexican Political Figure
 Associated Press
| | Mexican riot police closed the access to the presidential residence of Los Pinos in Mexico City, Mexico, in anticipation of the arrival of senators of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) following the removal of Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. (Photo: Eduardo Verdugo / AP) |
Mexico City - A decision whether to arrest ousted Mexico City's leftist mayor - and Mexico's leading presidential contender - could come this month, the chief prosecutor in the case said yesterday. The argument over whether Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador repeatedly ignored court orders in a relatively mundane land dispute could keep him from seeking the presidency next year and threatens to create national political turmoil.
Most experts say Mexican law forbids the candidacy of people facing criminal charges.
Carlos Javier Vega Memije, assistant attorney general for federal crimes, said he expected to put the case before a judge "within five to 10 days."
The judge would have 10 days to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.
That ruling could come "possibly in the final days of this month," Vega said.
Mexico's Congress, dominated by parties opposed to the mayor, voted Thursday to remove Lopez Obrador from office and strip him of the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by elected officials.
Lopez Obrador has led most presidential preference polls for the past two years.
He said his political opponents are using the case to prevent him from turning Mexico away from two decades of increasingly free-market policies and enacting the sort of center-left policies he has followed in Mexico City.
The possible charge is considered minor under Mexican law, but it could lead to a minimum one-year ban on political activity and to a prison sentence if a convicted person refuses to pay a fine.
Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said he would not seek bail or an injunction to avoid jail, raising the specter of a candidate behind bars as less-popular figures battle for the presidency.
Vega denied claims by Lopez Obrador that politics was behind the case or that President Vicente Fox was involved in deciding to bring the case.
Mexican Leftist Sees 'Dignified' Jail Time
Reuters
Mexico City - Mexico's presidential favorite, facing time behind bars in a legal wrangle that has split Mexico, said on Tuesday jail would be a "dignified" place for him to campaign for 2006 elections.
As political allies began a hunger strike, leftist Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said a vote by Congress to force him to face trial in a minor land dispute was a blow to Mexico's fledgling democracy.
"All this farce was for that, because the president's office doesn't want me to participate. This is a setback to Mexico's incipient democracy. We cannot go back to the time when the president said who could and who could not (succeed him)," the left-wing mayor said.
Mexico only established fully democratic elections in 2000, when conservative President Vicente Fox ended 71 years of one-party rule, and questions have been raised about how the country will handle a tricky political crisis.
Lopez Obrador is likely to be jailed in the coming weeks pending trial and questions remain over whether he could still run in the July 2006 election. He has vowed to campaign from jail.
"Prison is terrible, but prison is also dignified. It is a more honorable place for victims of injustice than to be in conditional freedom," he told Mexican television.
"I will protest from prison. I don't want anyone to pay my bail. This is the way to demonstrate there is an injustice and that they are not doing things according to the law."
Fox's National Action Party and the main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, both trailing Lopez Obrador in opinion polls, joined forces last week to strip the mayor of his immunity from prosecution.
An arrest warrant for the mayor is likely to come at the end of April, the attorney general's office said on Tuesday.
Political Maneuver
As Lopez Obrador spoke out, his opponents stepped up the political gamesmanship.
In a clash between the federal authorities and leftist local government, the head of the lower house of deputies presented a challenge in the Supreme Court on Monday against the Mexico City legislative assembly. Last week, the assembly filed a legal challenge rejecting the congressional action against the mayor.
Deputies from Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, boycotted Congress on Tuesday and a PRD senator began a 12-day hunger strike by 16 senators at the gates of Fox's presidential residence.
Between lines of chained barricades manned by police, Sen. Jesus Ortega sat under a plastic canopy and said he would remain there, drinking only water, until midday on Wednesday, when other senators would take over.
"Today is the first phase. It's a 24-hour hunger strike. Tomorrow, two senators will replace me. And it will carry on for the next 12 days," Ortega said, adding local PRD politicians in 20 states planned similar action.
A recent survey found 70 percent of Mexicans think the move to put Lopez Obrador on trial over a piece of private land that he allegedly expropriated to build a hospital access road was a political maneuver.
Lopez Obrador has been like a stone in the shoe of Mexico's political elite since he organized blockades of oil industry installations in his home state of Tabasco in the 1990s as part of environmental protests.
His supporters say generations of corrupt Mexican politicians have gotten away with far more serious crimes, especially before conservative Fox's election. |
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