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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Mayor Outlines Platform At Rally Speech
 Mexico Herald
| | Hundreds of thousands of people took to the capital's streets to support Lopez Obrador, Mexico City's impeached mayor and clear front runner in polls for next year's presidential elections. He would be barred from running if convicted of contempt, or if he were still fighting the case in court. Many demonstrators wore surgical masks to symbolize their silent protest. (Photo: AP) |
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico City's mayor-in-limbo, joined with an estimated 1.2 million of his supporters in a march on Sunday, at which he called on Mexicans to rally behind his "new project for the nation."
Speaking to the crowd overflowing the capital's central square, López Obrador, who has insisted that he will campaign for the presidency in 2006 despite the pending legal case against him, mixed politicking for higher office with decrying the effort against him.
In outlining the basis for his potential campaign platform, the mayor said that "The proposal we have is to establish in our country a state of well-being, a state of equality and fraternity, in which the poor, the weak and the forgotten find protection against economic uncertainties, social inequalities. There are sufficient resources in spite of what they have taken from us for more than five centuries ... that well administrated can allow giving security to all Mexicans, from the cradle to the grave."
"The change that we are proposing does not mean a return to statism," he said, in clear reference to recurring criticism that he intends to run Mexico as a populist state. "But it also does not mean a submissive acceptance of neo-liberal policies that are ineffective and dehumanizing."
Speaking to the legal case currently pending against him, a case that he has repeatedly characterized as a political plot to derail his presidential ambitions, López Obrador said that conspirators were "trying to deprive the people of the right to freely elect their representatives. Any way you look at it, this is an offensive action; a step back for Mexico's incipient democracy."
The mayor also repeated vows to return to his office on Monday after a week of campaigning outside the city, despite suggestions that such an action could lead to more charges against him.
"Legally, I continue to be the leader of the government of Mexico City," he said.
López Obrador promised his supporters that he would continue to conduct his resistance to the case against him according to nonviolent principles, and urged his supporters to do the same.
The number of participants at Sunday's rally rivaled those at a silent protest in June 2004 against violent crime rates in Mexico City and the failures of law enforcement, which was described at the time as the largest demonstration in recent history.
Rosario Verea, 34, a ballet dancer from Mexico City, said she came to Sunday's march in outrage after Congress decided to strip the major of his immunity, a process similar to impeachment.
"I was never for or against López Obrador," said Verea, who attended the demonstration with her mother and 5-year-old son. "But now I'm thinking about voting and voting for him."
Conservative President Vicente Fox, often identified by López Obrador and his followers as the prime mover in the case against the leftist mayor, spent Sunday at his ranch in Guanajuato, where he refused to acknowledge reporters' questions about the march. "No press conferences, no press conferences," he said while diverting conversation to the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI. |
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