 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Pursuer of Mexican Leader's Opponent Quits Under Fire
 Ginger Thompson - NYTimes
| | A beleaguered President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of attorney general Rafael Macedo de la Concha. |
Illahermosa, Mexico - The legal proceedings that threatened to knock Mexico's most popular politician off next year's presidential ballot and to plunge this country into turmoil seemed to come to a sudden end on Wednesday night, when a beleaguered President Vicente Fox announced the resignation of his attorney general and a review of the government's case against the politician.
In a nationally televised address, Mr. Fox said he had accepted the resignation of Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, who oversaw the prosecution of the politician, Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico City, and thus became one of the most polarizing figures in the government.
Mr. Macedo de la Concha, a conservative brigadier general who previously served as chief of the military prosecutor's office, had been credited with dismantling some of the most powerful drug cartels but also criticized for using his office to intimidate President Fox's political adversaries.
His resignation was widely considered a kind of peace offering to Mayor López Obrador, whose political career was threatened three weeks ago when Congress voted to lift his official immunity and remove him from office so that he could stand trial in a land dispute.
Striking an uncharacteristically stiff posture and formal tone of voice, President Fox said he considered defending democracy his government's most important responsibility, and wanted to guarantee that next year's presidential elections would be fair, transparent and open to all qualified figures.
"It will always be better for our Mexico to stay open to dialogue, and not duels," Mr. Fox said. "Our goal is to conciliate, not divide. Our future as a country will be promising if we are capable of reaching agreement on that which is fundamental, instead of futile confrontations."
To most Mexicans, the case against Mayor López Obrador had little to do with law and order. They called it a conspiracy led by President Fox's conservative National Action Party in alliance with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled this country for more than seven decades. Analysts from here to Washington and Wall Street denounced the case against the mayor as a threat to Mexico's fragile democracy.
The announcement comes only a few days after nearly one million people thronged the streets of the capital to protest the Fox government's campaign to prosecute Mr. López Obrador. The case against the mayor was based on a minor contempt of court charge for disobeying an order against the construction of a hospital access road. Still, it threatened the mayor's political career, and could have landed him, the leading contender to succeed Mr. Fox, in jail.
Mr. Fox, Mexico's first peacefully elected opposition president, had contended that the proceedings against Mayor López Obrador, a leftist street fighter of a politician who rose to power as a champion of the poor, was proof of the progress his government had made in establishing rule of law. No one, no matter how powerful, he said, stood above the law.
A majority of Mexicans, however, did not believe him. Since Mr. Fox came to power five years ago, his government has failed to live up to its promises to prosecute the multi-million-dollar scandals and violent massacres that were signatures of the old authoritarian rule.
"All transitions have a watershed, and this could be Mexico's," said Sergio Aguayo, who stood on the front lines of Mexico's struggle to reform its political system. "For me and many other people, this case was never about López Obrador. It was about the right to compete. It was about ideology, and the left standing up for change, because the right has failed to deliver what it promised. It was about power."
"What we learned was that President Fox's credentials as a democrat are not as strong as we believed and that the Mexican right is more reactionary than we ever imagined."
Manuel Camacho Solis, a federal legislator and political adviser to Mayor López Obrador, called the announcement by President Fox an "important victory."
"This is the fist step toward ending the assault against democracy," he said. "It is a decision that shows respect for the conscience of the people and puts us back on course for fair elections next year."
George Grayson, a political analyst who teaches government at the College of William and Mary and is writing a book on Mayor López Obrador, said the Fox government had virtually delivered the presidency to his party's leftist adversary. Polls published this week indicated that Mr. López Obrador had double-digit leads over all other leading contenders.
Indeed while the proceedings against the mayor, known as a desafuero, caused his popularity to soar, it plunged Mr. Fox's lackluster government into open conflict. In interviews earlier this week, aides to the president described the case against the mayor as an enormous mistake and said the president was looking for a way out.
The toll became clear Tuesday during a trip by Mr. Fox to Oaxaca State, in the south. After a lunch with business leaders and the governor, the president stopped to confront a young protester carrying a sign that described him as a "traitor to democracy."
Clearly agitated, the president asked over and over again for the protester to explain. The protester did not answer.
"I am not some traitor to democracy," Mr. Fox said. "On the contrary, I have worked for democracy for all." |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us