 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2005 
Mexico Leftist Vows To Win Presidency Or Go Home
 Alistair Bell - Reuters
| | "Every country has its own history and its own leader, we are different," Lopez Obrador said. |
Mexico City – Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the mayor of Mexico City, said this week that he would retire to his home state of Tabasco if he loses the July, 2006 ballot.
His vow to win or give up up was rare in Latin America, where politicians often cling onto jobs in public life despite losing support.
Lopez Obrador pledged to lift millions of Mexicans out of poverty if he wins, but to give up active politics if not.
"If the people say no, then I'll do something else," the mayor said in an interview at his office in the Mexico City's Zocalo square. "I'll go home and give classes in history."
An austere former Indian rights activist, Lopez Obrador leads in polls by more than 10 percentage points in the race to replace conservative President Vicente Fox.
He won a major victory over the government last month when Fox backed down from a legal challenge against the mayor in the face of mass street protests.
The dispute over minor legal charges, which could have knocked Lopez Obrador out of the elections, caused a political crisis and shook financial markets.
Lopez Obrador, a 51-year-old widower who travels in a modest car, made clear that he did not want to end up like other Mexican party bosses and politicians, many of them on the left, who refuse to give up their posts.
"I am ready to be able to change to another way of life," he said. "I don't aspire to being a political chieftain or a moral leader or anything like that."
If he wins, Lopez Obrador would be Mexico's first president from a left-wing party, and part of a wave of leftists that have come to power in Latin America in recent years.
Critics compare him to populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while many in financial markets hope he is a more pragmatic leftist like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
"Every country has its own history and its own leader, we are different," Lopez Obrador said. "I have respect for them but I don't want to be pigeonholed like that."
He will resign as mayor at the end of July to run in the primaries for his Party of the Democratic Revolution, which he is almost assured of winning.
His main rivals in the presidential elections are likely to come from Fox's National Action Party and the main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, which Fox ousted at 2000 elections after it had ruled Mexico for 71 years. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us