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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2005 
Slim, Mexico's Richest Man, Woos Labor to Influence Election
 Bloomberg
| | Slim has said Mexico, whose economy is second to Brazil in the region, must improve its competitiveness. |
Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico, is trying to shape the agenda for next year's presidential election.
The 65-year-old billionaire is asking candidates to endorse a program to spur economic growth in Latin America's second- biggest economy. The plan calls for cutting energy costs, strengthening the legal system and investing more in roads.
Slim's most-public step into politics may influence July's election because of the labor-business consensus he has forged. Supporters of his 12-page "national accord" include Heladio Ramirez, president of Mexico's National Confederation of Small Farmers, and Emilio Azcarraga, chairman of Mexico City-based Grupo Televisa SA, the world's No. 1 Spanish language broadcaster.
"Mr. Slim has the power to bring people together," said Ramirez, 66, a member of the 12-person committee Slim assembled to promote the plan. The committee met last month with President Vicente Fox, who can't stand for re-election when his six-year term ends next year, to discuss the so-called National Accord for Unity, Law, Development, Investment and Employment.
Slim's new mission underscores concern among executives about former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the current presidential frontrunner, said Raul Alejandro Padilla, president of Mexico's Confederation of Chambers of Commerce in Mexico City. They are concerned Lopez Obrador may win and reject policies needed to help Mexico's economy grow, Padilla said.
'Civil Society'
"It's a manifestation of the fact that people don't feel very accurately represented by the political parties and notables from here and there try to take upon themselves the label of representatives of civil society," said Alejandro Puare, a visiting professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Slim's investments make up more than a third of the Mexican stock exchange's market value. His companies include Mexico City- based America Movil SA, Latin America's largest wireless telephone company, and Mexico City-based Telefonos de Mexico SA, Latin America's largest fixed-line phone company, which is run by his sons.
Slim has said Mexico, whose economy is second to Brazil in the region, must improve its competitiveness.
Companies such as Monterrey-based steelmaker Hylsamex SA, Mexico's third-largest steel producer, say electricity costs in Mexico are as much as a third more than in the U.S. Narrow two- lane highways often damaged by rains make it difficult to transport goods in southern Mexico, the poorest region of the country.
The legal system is so inefficient that creditors have been trying to collect $1.8 billion of defaulted debt from Monclova, Mexico-based steelmaker Altos Hornos de Mexico SA since May 1999.
Lagging Growth
Since Fox took office in December 2000, Mexico's $767 billion economy expanded an average 1.6 percent annually, short of a campaign promise of 7 percent annual growth that helped Fox end a seven-decade rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
"The pending tasks we face to improve our competitiveness are to manage our resources well, our trade agreements and to avoid letting our exchange rate appreciate too much," Slim said in an August interview in New York.
Slim, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $23.8 billion, has been taking a bigger role in Mexican politics. During the 2000 presidential election, Slim donated 18 million pesos ($1.9 million), divided among the three main parties to avoid revealing his favorite, said Jose Martinez, author of an unauthorized biography of Slim published in 2003.
His choice became clear only when he was photographed at the headquarters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico City as candidate Francisco Labastida conceded to Fox.
On Aug. 5 this year, Slim sat next to Roberto Madrazo, the presidential candidate for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, at the politician's birthday party.
'End to the Myth'
"Slim himself put an end to the myth he tried to create that he doesn't meddle with politics," Martinez, 48, "He's always surrounded by politicians. He's always backed the PRI."
Asked earlier this month in Buenos Aires if he was backing a candidate for president, Slim said "no."
Slim's effort to woo union and industry leaders began last November, when he went to the electricians' union headquarters in Mexico City for a lunch of shrimp and steak.
"He relayed his anxiety that, unless our companies grow faster, we won't be able to generate the quantity and quality of jobs the country needs," said Jose Luis Barraza, president of Mexico's Business Council, who was a guest at the lunch.
The accord's signers want the endorsement of candidates from Mexico's three largest political parties, including Lopez Obrador. Support from all the candidates would help break the impasse in congress over proposals such as opening the energy industry to private investment and improving tax collection when the new president takes office in December 2006, Padilla said.
Lopez Obrador's Critique
Lopez Obrador, in a statement on his Web site the day before the accord was signed on Sept. 28, criticized the agreement as "missing three aspects: fighting poverty, fighting corruption and making a commitment to not privatize the electric or oil industries."
Slim has known Lopez Obrador since 2000. He met him several times as a partner in a project to restore the colonial center of the nation's capital. As part of that effort, Slim led a group of executives who hired former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's consulting firm to help develop crime-fighting strategies.
In May 2003, Slim strolled down the streets of downtown Mexico City alongside Lopez Obrador and Fox to show them the results of his labor: surveillance cameras to help prevent crime, restored streets and new hotels and restaurants.
Slim "breathed new life into the historic center, he may be able to do it for the nation too," said Joaquin Gamboa Pascoe, 78, secretary-general of the Mexican Workers' Confederation.
To contact the reporter on this story: Adriana Arai in Mexico City at aarai1@bloomberg.net |
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