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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2005 
Mexican Presidential Hopeful Bids Farewell to Job as Mayor
 Morgan Lee - Associated Press
| | Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he will continue to fight to stay ahead of a field of increasingly competitive candidates, armed with generous public funding. |
Mexico City – It was his final predawn press conference as Mexico City mayor, and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador continued to cast himself as an underdog Thursday in the Mexican presidential race. The mariachis disagreed, however, serenading him with "The King" as he walked off stage.
Lopez Obrador, the front-runner in Mexico's early presidential race, will leave office Friday to campaign fulltime and seek the nearly assured nomination of his party, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
Although he leads all national polls, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he will continue to fight to stay ahead of a field of increasingly competitive candidates, armed with generous public funding.
At the last of 1,378 morning news conferences as mayor, Lopez Obrador, 51, said adversaries are betting he'll fade away before July's vote.
"They are saying that when I leave the government, it's going to be different," said Lopez Obrador, whose folksy manner and big public spending programs have won over millions of capital residents. "I see it the opposite way. ... Although we won't be on television during this time, because we don't have the money, we are going to keep having a presence."
Heavy city spending under Lopez Obrador's direction – on free school supplies, pensions for the elderly and a new, second-story highway system that soars over the capital – have sparked concerns about a return to the economically devastating patronage politics employed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, during decades of single-party government.
President Vicente Fox, whose 2000 election ended 71 years of PRI government, is prohibited by law from running for re-election in 2006.
Dozens of residents from a recently built city housing project were among the people who slipped into City Hall to witness the mayor's last hours in office, offering nothing but praise.
"The other political parties haven't done as much for the people," said housewife Maricela Gonzalez, 49, who left home at 4 a.m. to catch Lopez Obrador's arrival at 6:30.
A shuffling, silver-haired woman clutching a bouquet of red roses for Lopez Obrador won cheers from the crowd and was ushered through a security checkpoint outside the mayor's office.
On his final working day, Lopez Obrador will inaugurate part of a massive downtown renovation project – an effort backed by telecom magnate Carlos Slim Helu, ranked one of the world's five richest billionaires by Forbes Magazine. It's unclear how much support Lopez Obrador's presidential run will enjoy from the business community. |
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