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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Mayor: I'll Fight From Prison
 El Universal
| | López Obrador is prepared to be jailed, but pledges to keep campaigning from behind bars if necessary. |
Mexico City - Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who faces possible imprisonment that could end his presidential hopes, said Monday that he will continue campaigning from his prison cell, and called for more protests. "It's an honor to head a civil disobedience movement," he said.
Congress's lower house votes on Thursday on letting the Attorney General's Office prosecute the mayor.
A "yes" vote may disqualify López Obrador from running in next year's presidential election due to his facing criminal charges for ignoring a court order in a land dispute.
At his hearing in front of a full house, López Obrador will have 30 minutes to speak before the deputies decide his political fate.
Speculation continues to grow about the real motives behind the legal action against the mayor. Government-owned news agency Notimex published an opinion piece, which speculated about possible political and economic instability in the event of the mayor being stripped of his immunity from prosecution.
The article said: "The crisis that the desafuero process could trigger is not speculation by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) to stop Andrés Manuel López Obrador being jailed. It is a reality that is already happening in various parts of the country, and the government and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) should take it into account before Congress's lower house makes its decision."
Protests have started in Yucatán, Oaxaca and Mexico City and are expected to grow in size and sweep across the country before Thursday's vote.
The civil disorder is perhaps what PRI and government supporters want so that the PRD shows itself in a bad light, the agency said.
"The mass protests are worrying politicians, businesspeople and even religious figures, because they could destabilize the country. Perhaps the government and PRI are betting on the discontent losing steam over time while López Obrador is seen as a weakened figure by his being in jail."
"The people who would benefit from the mayor's jailing are PRI leader and probable presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo; President Vicente Fox and First Lady Marta Sahagún who perhaps has the greatest interest in getting López Obrador out of the running," Notimex said. Sahagún is a potential presidential candidate for the conservative National Action Party.
The current affairs weekly Proceso also linked Fox and Madrazo as the masterminds behind the conspiracy to make sure that López Obrador never gets the chance to run.
To get financial backing for his campaign from businesses that are worried about a López Obrador victory, Madrazo and a senior PRI figure Emilio Chuayffet promised some top businesspeople that they would support the desafuero, the weekly said.
But if protests spread nationwide, instead of being confined to just the capital, then these politicians may have miscalculated, and the economy will suffer, Notimex said.
Fox said recently that the economy and government finance are strong enough to be immune from fallout due to political scandals and protests.
Financiers, however, are less certain, the agency said, and the growing crisis has already hurt the stock market.
Businesspeople remember the disastrous currency devaluation in 1994, which followed a year of political instability. |
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