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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2006 
Vicente Fox Faces Chaos in Final Months in Office
 Julie Watson - Associated Press
| | A legislator for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) holds an old photograph of Mexico's President Vicente Fox with the word 'traitor' in Spanish after PRD legislators took over the presidium during the first session of Mexico's new congress September 1, 2006. (Henry Romero/Reuters) |
A day after protesting leftist lawmakers forced President Vicente Fox to abandon his state-of-the-nation speech, many Mexicans were concerned Saturday that the electoral dispute was spiraling out of control and threatening the stability of their still-fragile democracy.
The bold move has set the stage for an escalating battle between a president resistant to intervene in the growing national political crisis and leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who has thumbed his nose at the country's democratic institutions and vowed to govern Mexico from the streets.
It also raises the question of how effective Fox's successor, ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon, will be after his administration has tolerated supporters of Lopez Obrador taking over the capital and preventing keeping the president from speaking to lawmakers. The new president takes office Dec. 1.
Lopez Obrador has claimed fraud and dirty tricks robbed him of the presidency in the July 2 election. With the Federal Electoral Tribunal likely to declare Calderon president-elect this week, many are wondering what protesters will do next.
Lopez Obrador has said he will never recognize a Calderon presidency and instead has said he will declare himself as the alternative president during the nation's most important holiday, Independence Day, on Sept. 16. He has called on protesters to block the festivities in which soldiers traditionally march to the capital's central plaza, the Zocalo, where Lopez Obrador has been sleeping in a protest tent for the past two months.
So far, Fox has largely ignored the crisis while thousands of Lopez Obrador supporters have filled the capital's financial and historic districts with sprawling tent cities.
Even after being blocked from speaking to Congress, Fox aired a recorded address on national TV that touted his government's accomplishments, while skirting a direct mention of the country's worst political crisis in modern history. It cut to video of smiling school children and other cheerful scenes.
The cancellation of his last state-of-the-nation speech as leftist lawmakers stood in the chambers holding banners calling him a traitor was a stark contrast to Fox's 2000 historic victory, which Mexico rejoiced as proof that the country had finally become a true democracy.
Political commentator Homero Aridjis said Fox may have ended 71 years of authoritarian, single-party rule and his conservative fiscal policies have stabilized the peso, but his legacy is “leaving us with political collapse.”
The former Coca-Cola manager has failed to alleviate poverty or usher in much needed reforms, stymied by his lack of political savvy.
But his biggest challenge has come at the end of his six-year term. How he handles the deepening electoral crisis in his final three months in office will be crucial to the fate of the fledgling democracy.
Analysts say now more than ever Fox needs to use his party's weight in the newly elected Congress to push through social programs that will benefit the poor and possibly diffuse Lopez Obrador's support.
“If Congress approves a social program that helps the mass of Mexican people, no one will remember whether Calderon won by 250,000 votes or 25 million votes,” George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said. “You create your own mandate.” |
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