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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2006 
Mexico President Hopefuls Keep Campaigning
 Ioan Grillo - Associated Press
| | Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN), smiles during a meeting with immigrant leaders in Mexico City, Wednesday, 7 June, 2006. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) |
The top contenders in Mexico's tight presidential race took to the airwaves on Wednesday, jousting for a lead one day after a debate that left the candidates in a dead heat.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party both claimed to win the final face-to-face showdown before the July 2 election.
"There was no winner," said Raul Millan, a 45-year-old furniture restorer from Mexico City. "Both candidates did a good job of energizing their supporters but little to persuade others."
Lopez Obrador's party, meanwhile, presented documents it says show Calderon used his former Cabinet post under President Vincente Fox to give lucrative government contracts to his brother-in-law.
During the debate, Lopez Obrador said he had proof that Calderon awarded government contracts worth $227 million to companies controlled by his brother-in-law.
Party leaders softened those charges Wednesday, however, saying the figure was actually the amount of money the businesses that allegedly received favorable treatment earned between 2002 and 2005.
Calderon denied any wrongdoing.
"I never had any contact either directly or through litigation, with my brother-in-law nor nay other family member from my post at the energy secretary," he said.
Political analysts say the key to victory could now be who can lure the most votes from Roberto Madrazo, running third in the polls and fighting an uphill battle to bring his Institutional Revolutionary Party back to the presidency.
With opinion polls showing Madrazo more than 10 percentage points behind the front-runners, many of his sympathizers may switch their votes to a candidate seen as having a chance to win.
"In World Cup soccer terms, it is the Brazil effect," said Calderon campaign spokesman Arturo Sarukhan. "Team Mexico always gets knocked out of the World Cup early, so Mexicans switch to supporting Brazil, which normally wins. Likewise, a lot of voters will abandon the sinking PRI ship and bet on a winner."
Sarukhan said Calderon will air new ads aimed at PRI-profile voters and focus on touring PRI stronghold states.
George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary, however, said Madrazo sympathizers are more likely to defect to Lopez Obrador, who was a member of the PRI in the 1980s.
"Lopez Obrador is the first cousin of the PRI," Grayson said. "He uses the same rhetoric of nationalism and promises of welfare handouts that the PRI have used for years."
Obrador plans to call his supporters to the streets to give his campaign momentum. After Tuesday's debate, he held a rally of about 70,000 supporters in Mexico City's central zocalo plaza. |
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