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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2005 
Presidential Hopeful Has Left In Sights
 Alistair Bell - Reuters
| | Santiago Creel, favorite to be candidate for Fox's pro-business National Action Party, pictured here during a press conference in Washington, May 31, 2005, told Reuters he could beat Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the capital's left-wing mayor who leads opinion polls for the July 2006 election by double digits. (Photo: Chris Kleponis/Reuters) |
Mexico City - A close ally of President Vicente Fox vowed on Wednesday to defeat a high-flying Mexican leftist in next year's presidential elections by offering voters stability and practical economic policies.
Santiago Creel, favorite to be candidate for Fox's pro-business National Action Party, told Reuters he could beat Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the capital's left-wing mayor who leads opinion polls for the July 2006 election by double digits.
"I want to be campaigning now and for Lopez Obrador to campaign so we can start debating," he said in an interview.
If the mayor can maintain his high popularity, helped by cash handouts to old folk in Mexico City, he will be on track to become the latest of a new breed of Latin American leftists in power.
But Creel, sometimes accused of being wooden, predicted Mexicans would reject the mayor's often fiery rhetoric for his more understated tones.
"I think a serious campaign, a campaign with realistic proposals that can be carried out, a campaign that offers projects that are possible will be very attractive to a lot of people who want the economy to go well," Creel said.
Creel resigned as interior minister last week to try to win his conservative party's nomination. He is languishing in third place in opinion polls of likely candidates from all parties.
Creel lost mayoral elections to Lopez Obrador in 2000 and he was a key figure in a failed government attempt this year to bring legal charges against Lopez Obrador that could have knocked him out of the election race.
He said Lopez Obrador had overspent on popular public works as mayor and warned he could put Mexico in a debt crisis if he became president.
"You just have to look at the public finances of Mexico City. He doubled the level of indebtedness in less than four years. He is going to have to explain to us how he is going to pay it," Creel said.
An austere widower, Lopez Obrador promises to cut spending on government and give priority to Mexico's millions of poor if he wins the balloting.
Creel, a U.S.-trained former lawyer and descendant of an American diplomat who settled in Mexico in the 19th century, said that if elected he would maintain a low public deficit, increase Mexico's competitiveness as an exporter and bring in democratic reforms.
Besides Creel's party and the mayor's Party of the Democratic Revolution, a third party is also in the running in what analysts believe will be a close race.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until it was ousted by Fox in 2000, has not yet picked a candidate.
Creel's party, the PAN, will begin its primaries in September. He is favored to beat former energy minister Felipe Calderon and Francisco Barrio, the party's ex-head in the chamber of deputies. |
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