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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
Mexican Politico Finds Niche
 Kevin G. Hall - Knight Ridder
| | National Action Party presidential candidate Felipe Calderon talks during a rally in Ciudad Camargo, on the northern State of Chihuahua, Mexico. Calderon is running with the pro-business National Action Party, which President Vicente Fox took to the presidency in 2000. (AP/Guillermo Arias) |
Tecamac, Mexico - Under a big-top tent, hundreds of Mexicans hold their palms skyward. Although it might look like a Baptist revival, it is a political rally for presidential candidate Felipe Calderón, who calls himself Mr. Clean Hands and vows to rid Mexico of corruption.
That is a lofty promise in a land where corruption is endemic. But it is good politics for the candidate of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, as he tries to distinguish himself from other candidates in the July 2 election.
Front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, the PRD, was mayor of Mexico City. In 2004, his personal secretary and finance chief were separately videotaped receiving briefcases full of cash.
The third candidate, Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, cannot fully explain how he, a poorly paid public servant, is worth millions, with luxury homes in Mexico and Miami. The PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, is so closely identified with corruption that top candidates make no mention of their party in their campaign ads.
Being Mr. Clean Hands also is a smart move for Calderón as he tries to broaden his appeal beyond the PAN, said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City political analyst.
``If he doesn't win votes from the left and center, he won't win it on the PAN base alone,'' Chabat said.
A wonkish attorney who holds a master's degree in public administration from Harvard, Calderón, 43, has a squeaky clean reputation.
If he were to win, Calderón would follow fellow PAN member Vicente Fox, whose rise to the presidency in 2000 was the first time someone other than the PRI standard-bearer had won the presidency in seven decades.
Calderón is more conservative than Fox. He made waves when he told a TV interviewer that he opposed distribution of the morning-after pill, and in an interview with Knight Ridder, he said he opposed abortion, which is illegal in Mexico. He added that Mexican law, which permits abortion in cases of rape, incest, congenital defects and risks to a mother's life, needs no change.
Calderón must try to benefit from Fox's popularity while also establishing himself as his own man. That is why Calderón's other moniker - ``The Disobedient Son'' - is splashed across the front of his campaign bus. It is a reference to how, in an upset victory within the PAN's party primary, he defeated the candidate Fox preferred to succeed him.
Calderón said he would continue Fox's fiscal discipline, which brought inflation below U.S. levels last year and reduced lending rates. But he will be quicker to criticize the United States in areas such as the prison camp for alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. |
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