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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2006 
Mexico's Presidential Race Suddenly Looks Too Close To Call
 Will Weissert - Associated Press
| | Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party speak during meeting with supporters in Mexico City on Wednesday April 26, 2006. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo) |
Mexico City – Mexico's presidential race is entering a two-month sprint to the finish with no clear leader, analysts said Wednesday, after former front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador fiddled away his lead by ridiculing opponents and failing to show up for a debate.
Just as many, including international investors, were growing comfortable with the scenario of a clear victory for Lopez Obrador, the country now faces a potentially more conflictive scenario: a hotly contested race that might be won by a small margin on July 2.
Some speculated that Lopez Obrador would have to rethink his strategy, but the leftist former mayor of Mexico City defiantly vowed Wednesday not to change a thing, and mocked polls that showed his support dropping.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha. I'd like to see someone who actually believes their polls,” Lopez Obrador told thousands of supporters at a Mexico City auditorium who chanted his name and chorused, “You are not alone!”
“We aren't worried,” he said, “we are going to campaign the same we have always have, from the ground up.”
Characteristically, he shrugged off the debate, summing it up in a one-liner: “More of the same.”
Still, rival Felipe Calderon of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party has made a strong showing, both in Tuesday night's debate and in recent polls.
“This tightening race isn't good news, because the candidates' rhetoric is going to get more extreme,” wrote columnist and news anchor Joaquin Lopez Doriga in the newspaper Milenio.
Both Calderon and third-place rival Roberto Madrazo of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party claimed victory in the debate, which also included two minor-party candidates. One of them, Patricia Mercado, may have won over some of Lopez Obrador's disaffected leftist base.
Madrazo focused largely on attacking Calderon – he said his rival's name 19 times – and what he described as the errors and inertia of Fox's administration. Calderon stuck largely to his proposals – reducing tax rates, opening the economy further to private investment and job-creation.
“There was actually a fair amount of substance in the debate, despite the attacks,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “Calderon has managed to put himself in the spotlight as he didn't previously.”
The latest polls show Lopez Obrador and Calderon in a statistical tie, with Madrazo five to 10 percentage points back. Calderon was once 10 points behind Lopez Obrador.
Arturo Sarukhan, Calderon's international adviser, said in an interview that “we were able to turn over Lopez Obrador's numbers in a fortnight.”
“Sixty days before the election is a long time,” he said. “But we believe that the election is under control. We have gained momentum and we have Lopez Obrador on the defensive.”
That was symbolized by the empty podium at the debate reserved for the ex-mayor, to whom the other candidates directed only passing, slighting references. Lopez Obrador says he will attend a second and final debate June 6.
In his absence, immigration got only brief mention.
“The proposal is that Mexico create jobs here, so they don't keep building these walls of shame,” said the other minor-party candidate, Roberto Campa, referring to proposals for U.S. border walls.
Lopez Obrador said he skipped debate because he didn't want to take time out of his whistle-stop campaign, but that excuse may not hold up.
“He miscalculated,” said Luis Rubio, general director of Mexico City's Center of Research Development who analyzed the debate for Televisa, a network watched by about 70 percent of the country's viewers. “He thought he had nothing to lose. But we are now in a different moment.”
Lopez Obrador, who made no public comment before or after the debate, was largely controlled a day later, restating promises to lower gasoline and electricity costs, force the rich to pay their fair share of taxes and create jobs that will help stem the tide of undocumented migrants heading to the United States in search of work.
Lopez Obrador's leftist politics once made some in the business community nervous, but his formerly large lead, and efforts to depict himself as a moderate, had given stock markets and foreign investors a chance to get comfortable with him.
Some have been troubled by an angry tone in Lopez Obrador's recent remarks, however. He has dismissed opponents, and even Fox, as “squawking birds” and told them to “shut up.” Rivals' ad campaigns depict him as an intolerant, autocratic radical.
“It's going to be a much tighter race than most people predicted early,” Selee said.
Lopez Obrador has pledged to respect the election results, though some worry that his supporters may not.
“If Lopez Obrador wins by 10 points, there won't be any problems,” Lopez Doriga wrote. “But if he loses by 5 percent of the vote, there will be a postelection conflict.”
Mexican Conservative on the Rise in Election Battle
Kieran Murray - Reuters
Mexico City - The conservative ruling party candidate in Mexico's presidential election is on a roll after a strong performance in the first televised debate of the campaign and a string of mistakes by his main leftist rival.
Without delivering any knockout blows, Felipe Calderon won the debate on Tuesday night by laying out his policy proposals and staying calm.
He was helped by the refusal of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to join the debate. An empty chair was set out on the stage to mark Lopez Obrador's absence and it was widely seen as another blow to his campaign.
Lopez Obrador chose not to join the debate so as not to risk his lead, which at one point stood above 10 percentage points. His support has slumped in recent weeks, however, and he is now locked in a tight race with Calderon.
An opinion poll in the respected newspaper Reforma on Wednesday showed 43 percent of people thought Calderon won the debate, compared to just 18 percent who said third-placed candidate Roberto Madrazo came out ahead.
Other newspapers and analysts agreed Calderon, of the ruling National Action Party, put in the best performance and that Lopez Obrador hurt his own cause in the July 2 election by staying away.
"We did very well last night," a jubilant Calderon said on Wednesday. "I know I won the debate."
He also pointed to a separate election poll this week that showed him with 38 percent support among probable voters, ahead of Lopez Obrador for the first time.
"Even before the debate, I was moving up strongly and Lopez Obrador was falling strongly," he said. "The debate was one more step toward the presidency."
CALDERON PROMISES JOBS
Calderon is promising voters he will create more jobs, reform Mexico's inefficient energy industry and maintain the conservative fiscal policies of President Vicente Fox, whose election victory in 2000 ended 71 years of single-party rule.
Lopez Obrador, the candidate from the Party of the Democratic Revolution, is pledging to cut poverty by spending heavily on welfare programs and create jobs with big infrastructure projects.
Leftist and populist leaders have taken power in several other Latin American nations in recent years and a Lopez Obrador victory could mark a major defeat for the free market reforms model followed across the region in the 1990s.
That seemed very likely just a few weeks ago but Lopez Obrador has since hurt himself by attacking Fox, who remains popular, and by refusing to enter the debate.
Aggressive campaign ads from rival campaigns also put the leftist on the defensive. He had to fight back again on Wednesday, knocking down allegations that his decision to avoid the debate showed disrespect toward ordinary voters.
"I have daily communication with people," Lopez Obrador told a radio station. "Every week I have direct meetings with 100,000 people in town squares. Most people know my proposals and in no way do I consider it a lack of respect."
Lopez Obrador insists he is way ahead of Calderon and has said he will join a second debate in early June.
Still, Calderon was in a buoyant mood. He claimed that many of those who supported Lopez Obrador were volatile voters who could easily change candidates, and have done so.
"It was a very, very, very fragile vote, a totally flexible vote, and it suddenly began to crumble," he said.
(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel, Chris Aspin and Luis Rojas Mena) |
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