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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2006 
Zapatista Leader Says Mexican First Lady has Overstepped Her Office's Political Bounds
 Manuel De La Cruz - Associated Press
| | A Tzotzil Indian woman carries flowers during a memorial service in honor of Comandante Ramona in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, Saturday Jan. 7, 2006. Comandante Ramona, one of the few female leaders in the Zapatista rebel movement, died Friday, Jan. 6, 2006 after a decade-long struggle with kidney disease, rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos said. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) |
Tonala, Mexico – Ski-masked Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos on Monday criticized Mexican first lady Marta Sahagun, suggesting she has seized too large a role in government despite not being elected by the public.
Heading up a meeting of 400 Zapatista supporters in the hot, sticky city of Tonala on the southern state of Chiapas' Pacific coast, Marcos said Sahagun should face criminal charges for trying to parlay her role as first lady into a key leadership post in the administration of President Vicente Fox.
"Is it criminal or not that Mrs. Sahagun de Fox, wife of Sr. Fox ... says she is or acts like she has a public office when no one elected her," said Marcos, who recently abandoned his military title in favor of the civilian moniker "Delegate Zero."
Marcos is on a six-month tour that will take him from Mexico's southernmost state to the U.S. border in what he has called "the other campaign" ahead of presidential elections on July 2. The Zapatista rebel leader said he wants to create a nationalist leftist movement but won't seek office himself or endorse political parties.
A spokesman for Sahagun could not be reached for comment late Monday night.
Term limits bar Fox from seeking a second, six-year term and Sahagun once was considered a top contender to replace him. She announced in the summer of 2004 she would not campaign, however, after her potential bid was sharply criticized by some who saw it as tantamount to Fox seeking re-election.
Former energy secretary Felipe Calderon won a primary race to secure the nomination of Fox's conservative National Action Party in November.
Though Fox ended the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 71-year hold on the presidency with his win at the polls in 2000, Marcos said National Action could not preach democracy while allowing the unelected Sahagun to play such a key government role. |
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