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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Opposition Chief at Risk in Mexico
 Ginger Thompson & James C. Mckinley Jr. - NYTimes
| | Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador raises his arm as thousands of leftist sympathizers stage a protest Sunday to complain about his removal, at Plaza del Zocalo, in Mexico City. (Photo: EPA) |
Mexico City - In a vote that casts doubt on the strength of Mexico's fledgling democracy, this city's popular leftist mayor lost a critical battle in Congress on Thursday over a measure that is likely to force him off the ballot in presidential elections next year and could lead to his imprisonment.
Hundreds of thousands of people were gathered in Mexico City's central square throughout the day to protest the action, a rare proceeding known in Mexico as a "desafuero," in which Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador was stripped of his official immunity so he could stand trial in a minor land dispute.
In terms of political rights, the Mexican Constitution holds suspects guilty until proved innocent, so Mr. Lopez will be banned from politics until the end of a trial.
Legislators in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies began debating the charges about 10 a.m. in a scathing session that continued uninterrupted until the evening, when the vote was held. Of the 489 who attended the session, 360 favored lifting the immunity, 127 were opposed and there were 2 abstentions.
Political analysts said that the proceedings were a critical test in this country's transition to a full-fledged democracy that began just five years ago when Mexicans broke seven decades of single-party rule with the peaceful election of Vicente Fox, the first president to come from an opposition party.
The protests, which had largely ended by late Thursday, brought comparisons to the recent pro-democracy demonstrations in the Ukraine that helped lift Viktor A. Yuschenko to power. But while Mr. Lopez said support for him would grow, his adversaries seemed confident the protests would die out soon.
Mr. Fox, who left Mexico on Thursday to attend the funeral for Pope John Paul II, had often characterized the proceedings against Mr. Lopez as proof that elected officials could no longer operate above the law.
But, addressing his supporters on Thursday, Mr. López, 51, called the action against him a farce, staged for political reasons, not legal ones, from the offices of the president. Indeed, cases like the one Mayor Lopez is facing rarely warrant prosecution, let alone imprisonment.
Polls have consistently shown Mr. López as the leading candidate to succeed President Fox.
The mayor said the president's conservative National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran this country for seven consecutive decades, had forged an unlikely alliance to cripple his left-wing movement so that they could stay in power and maintain the status quo. That claim appeared borne out in the vote: all of the National Action Party's legislators voted in favor of lifting the immunity; all but 12 members of the PRI, which has a plurality in Congress, voted in favor as well.
Knocking him out of the race, Mr. López warned, would undermine the will of the people and move Mexico back to an era when the political elite ruled like monarchs.
"Whichever of them wins, things remain the same," Mr. López said. "They will maintain a corrupt and privileged regime, and continue devouring the country."
The case against the mayor has polarized Mexico, raising concerns about civil unrest here and worrying Wall Street. Mr. López's spending on social programs and public works projects has made him popular among the poor and the struggling middle class.
Together with his talk of reining in free-trade policies and renegotiating the national debt, that popularity has prompted some business leaders to compare him to Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez.
His earthy, austere political style made ordinary Mexicans feel he understood their problems. But evidence of corruption among the mayor's aides - his chief political operative was caught by secret cameras accepting bribes from a wealthy businessman - and his refusal to voluntarily submit to prosecution in the land dispute made others wonder whether Mr. López was dishonest.
Newspaper polls have shown that as many as 60 percent of Mexicans reject the proceedings against Mr. López as a political conspiracy. Still, no matter what side they are on, Mexican political leaders, intellectuals and business executives have said they considered this a pivotal moment in their history. At stake, they said, was not whether or not Mr. López committed a minor crime, but the legitimacy of the upcoming presidential elections and of the multiparty democracy that emerged from the last.
"I am not here for López Obrador. I am here for Mexico," said Elisabeth Cazares, a housewife who attended the demonstration on Thursday in the central square, called the Zócalo. "There is a small class of powerful people in Mexico who live above us like they are in some kind of heaven on earth, and they think they know what is best and that the rest of us are incapable of making good choices. But we deserve a chance to govern."
Referring to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she added, "It is hard for me to accept that in these times, Mexico is still run like it was in the Porfiriato."
Mr. López, who has a history of leading violent protests, called on followers this time to mount a peaceful campaign of civil disobedience, and avoid harmful acts that could erode their public support. He has said he wants to emulate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.
"Nothing of violence," he told the crowds on Thursday. "No falling to provocation. This movement has been and will be peaceful. To do otherwise would be to act in the logic of our adversaries, and we cannot allow that."
The next step in the action, which is similar to an impeachment proceeding, is likely to be an order for Mr. Lopez's arrest and his ouster from his position as mayor. Mr. Lopez has said he would remain in jail throughout the trial, rather than posting bail, as an act of civil disobedience.
It became clear this week that concern about unrest had spread beyond Mexico. Foreign investors, who had helped double Mexican stock market values since early 2003, began to raise questions about whether the worsening political crisis could upset an otherwise stable Mexican economy. The stock market here had fallen more than 12 percent since a peak a month ago.
While the rest of the world mourned the death of Pope John Paul II, this mostly Roman Catholic country seemed consumed by the legal proceedings against Mr. López. His appearance before Congress became a moment of riveting political drama.
The lead prosecutor against Mr. López, Carlos Vega Memije, told legislators that for 11 months, Mr. López had disobeyed a court order against building a hospital access road. Echoing the Fox party line, he said that the time had come to stop the Mexican authorities from abusing their power to stand above the law.
"What Mexico do we want," the prosecutor asked, "the Mexico of laws, or the Mexico of impunity."
Mr. López scoffed at the prosecutor's arguments. Then he asserted that his accusers were guilty of much bigger crimes of government corruption that had cost the country billions of dollars and untold numbers of lives, and that none had been prosecuted. |
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