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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2005 
Mayor Triumphant After Meeting With President
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador arrives for a news conference after a private meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox at the official presidential residence Los Pinos in Mexico City. (Photo: Reuters) |
Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador Friday emerged triumphant from a brief meeting with President Vicente Fox that likely dispelled the last remaining threats to his political career.
This week, Fox's government dismissed criminal charges against López Obrador clearing the way for him to run for president next year and easing a nasty political dispute between the two that Fox's office said "had placed in doubt" the nation's democracy.
Smiling and speaking like a presidential candidate, López Obrador said he tried to touch on the 2006 presidential elections during the 15 to 20 minute meeting, but that the president wanted to stick to simple protocol.
"It's a moment for the reaffirmation of democracy," the mayor said. "On that topic there cannot be a step back." Prosecutors were considering charges against López Obrador on allegations he was slow in obeying a court order in a land dispute, but later dropped the case, saying legal codes contained no punishment for the offense.
The mayor had accused Fox of using the charges to block him from running for president something the president denied. Fox is barred by law from seeking a second term.
López Obrador said that during the meeting, he pledged to do his best, and invited Fox to do the same to make the 2006 elections "clean, free and peaceful." The mayor said he also gave Fox a report on crime rates in Mexico City and agreed to implement one of the president's pet initiatives, universal health care, in Mexico City, the only place in the country that had yet to implement the program.
López Obrador has not officially declared his presidential candidacy, but was already stumping Friday night, saying an economic accord, rather than one pertaining strictly to migration, was the best way to protect millions of Mexicans who head to the United States illegally in search of work.
"What we are proposing is a change in economic policy, but that does not mean implementing radicalism," he said, adding, "the topic of the migrants is the principal topic in the bilateral agenda." Asked if he was moving to the center to run for president, the mayor responded that "the left was in the heart." Billed as a meeting that could take an hour, the closed-door session lasted only between 15 and 20 minutes.
"It was productive, brief and good," López Obrador said.
Besides seeking peace with López Obrador himself, Fox must now work to soothe relations with the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had joined the president's party in pressing charges against the mayor.
"What he's doing isn't solving the problem. Instead, he's just trying to please everybody," grumbled PRI party spokesman Sergio Martínez Chavarría. PRI congressional leader Emilio Chuayffet accused Fox of "violating the rule of law in search of reconciliation."
Fox's spokesman, Rubén Aguilar, acknowledged that the decision to drop the charges against López Obrador was "for reasons of state." "The president decided to reconcile the rule of law with the continued development of democracy," he said.
In a news conference Friday, Aguilar called on the PRI to "help strengthen our young democracy through dialogue and political agreement." López Obrador's victory appeared to represent another boost for the rising tide of charismatic leftist governments in the region, although the mayor refused to identify himself with that current, saying "I don't have to look abroad for ideology." Many said that little now stands between López Obrador and the presidency.
"His path to the presidency now seems to be paved with gold," said political scientist Federico Estévez. "I don't really see what they can do to stop him." López Obrador was already planning his presidency earlier in the week, telling a local radio station he was thinking about setting up his office in the centuriesold National Palace on Mexico City's main square rather than use the park-like presidential residence known as Los Pinos built in the 1930s.
The palace space better fits López Obrador's brand of handout programs and political largesse. In the last century, its huge patios were often thronged with favor-seekers waiting for a chance to see the president.
Even the mayor's language seemed more presidential. He polished up a new campaign slogan, borrowed from Independence hero José María Morelos, saying he wants to "moderate both indigence and opulence" in Mexico, reflecting a more centrist image and his concern about the unequal distribution of wealth. |
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