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 Editorials | At Issue | April 2006 
Parties at Odds Over Spots
 El Universal/The Herald Mexico
| | Writer Elena Poniatowska |
The hottest front in the ongoing "Spot Wars" Monday centered around a new 20-second television ad from President Vicente Fox´s National Action Party (PAN) satirizing writer Elena Poniatowska´s appearance in commercials to support Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Poniatowska, a revered Mexican author and journalist who also serves the López Obrador campaign as an adviser for cultural affairs, talks in the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) ad about the "honest" and "costs-saving" manner in which two major projects - an upper deck along sections of the city´s main freeway and a pension program for the elderly - were carried out during the candidate´s stint as Mexico City mayor.
The PAN ad, which debuted Sunday during the hit Televisa program "Cantando por un sueño," ("Singing for a dream") excerpts the Poniatowski footage and her comments about "good government," and then cuts to the secretly recorded 2004 videotape of former PRD city officials René Bejarano and Gustavo Ponce stuffing wads of cash into a suitcase and gambling with high stakes in Las Vegas, respectively.
The Poniatowski spot included a plea for López Obrador´s opponents in the PAN and Madrazo´s PRI (the Institutional Revolutionary Party) to "Play fair, don´t slander." The PAN ad concludes with the message, "López Obrador, a danger for Mexico."
On Monday, López Obrador characterized the PAN ad as the latest episode in a "dirty war" being carried out in the media against his candidacy. Last month, the PAN ran a similar TV spot blending footage of López Obrador and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
DROP IN THE POLLS
Some of his supporters have blamed the "dirty war" for a recent drop in his lead in the presidential race, though the candidate himself insists that his percentage is still as high as ever. Others say the drop is due to López Obrador´s overly strong criticism of what he considers President Vicente Fox´s meddling in the campaign.
Both he and Poniatowski said the PRD ad was designed to counter the attacks against him.
"They´ve been telling a lot of lies, without presenting any proof, about how the second deck and the pensions for older people have supposedly indebted the city government," López Obrador said.
He said he considered the PAN response as aimed as much against the author as against him. "In the spot they attack Elena Poniatowska, who is a good woman, with integrity, and a very good writer," the candidate said.
In an interview published Sunday in EL UNIVERSAL, Poniatowska said she had received threats since her ads for the PRD candidate began running last week. "They call me on the telephone and tell me, ´we´re coming to get you, whore,´" she said.
She didn´t indicate from whom the threats might be coming. But she said her appearance in the ad was justified by the need to counter the attacks on the PRD candidate. "The way they´re going against López Obrador is a terrible thing, an infamy," she said.
The appearance, however, wasn´t her idea. "It could have been anybody involved in the campaign," she said. "But (the PRD) asked me to do the spot. I suppose it must have been because I´m a little old lady."
Anselmo Flores, a political scientist and researcher with the National Commission on Science and Technology (Conacyt), said Monday that the ongoing disputes among the parties over the campaign ads reflect not only the importance of money in the campaign and the media presence it can buy, but also the "poverty" of public debate in the Mexican political class.
"A media war like we´re seeing now will definitely carry costs for the perpetrators as well as their victims," he said. |
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