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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Calderon to Focus More on Poor
 Reuters
| | Felipe Calderon, presidential candidate for the National Action Party (PAN), arrives at a news conference at his party headquarters in Mexico City July 11, 2006. (Andrew Winning/Reuters) |
The conservative winner of Mexico's contested presidential election said he would pay more attention to the poor after the race showed wide support for promises to fight poverty, he said in a newspaper interview.
Ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon told Thursday's El Pais newspaper that a big message from the July 2 vote was the need for "very ambitious" policies to help Mexico's poor.
Official results show leftist anti-poverty crusader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost to Calderon by less than a percentage point.
"Equal opportunity was always among the five fundamental goals in my platform. But now it's obvious I will give it much more emphasis for the simple reason that I understand the message from the ballot boxes," Calderon told El Pais.
Two vote counts have shown Calderon, a pro-business and pro-foreign investment former energy minister, won the election.
Lopez Obrador, who campaigned on a promise to pull millions of Mexicans out of poverty, has claimed fraud and demanded a vote-by-vote recount.
Thousands of his supporters are set to demonstrate in Mexico's capital on Sunday and defend his claim he was cheated.
Calderon told Spain's El Pais that he wanted to get on with his mandate and reiterated that there was no fraud and no need for a recount.
"I want to start my mandate at full steam, with the certainty that the electoral court will ratify the results. The allegations the PRD (Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution) has presented are groundless," Calderon said.
Calderon has yet to be officially named president-elect as Mexico's electoral court has until August 31 to rule on Lopez Obrador's challenge and until September 6 to declare the election winner. |
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