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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2006 
Obrador Chides Fox, Offers Calmer Rhetoric
 Reuters
| | Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate of Mexico's left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), departs after a meeting in Mexico City May 15, 2006. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar) |
Navojoa, Mexico - Mexico's leftist presidential candidate told President Vicente Fox on Thursday to stay out of an increasingly nasty election campaign and said he would do his bit by cooling the rhetoric.
One day after calling Fox "a puppet, a plaything" of Washington for not opposing U.S. plans to tighten security on the border, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said it was time to calm down.
"I am going to restrain myself and be calm because the most important thing is we don't want confrontation," Lopez Obrador told reporters on a campaign swing through the northern state of Sonora.
He asked the conservative Fox for a meeting to help dampen the passions of a tight and ill-tempered campaign in which the main candidates are trading more accusations than proposals.
"I want to offer the president my help so we can guarantee there will be no confrontation, no scares, no economic, financial or political instability," Lopez Obrador said.
He has repeatedly accused Fox of interfering in the campaign on behalf of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon, who recently passed Lopez Obrador to take the lead in opinion polls ahead of the July 2 election.
Mexico's small Green Party said this week that Fox asked it to drop its election alliance with the third-placed Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and rally behind Calderon to help keep Lopez Obrador from power.
"This is a very regrettable, very serious revelation," Lopez Obrador said on Thursday. "The president shouldn't act like that, it is not his job. He has to act like a statesman, be above the party battles."
Fox ended 71 years of authoritarian PRI rule with his election victory in 2000. He remains a popular leader but is barred from running for re-election or campaigning for his party's candidate.
With Calderon and Lopez Obrador in a tight race, foreign investors are worried that Mexico could face street protests and possible violence if the election result is close and challenged by the losing candidates.
Lopez Obrador lashed out at Fox on Wednesday, saying he was too soft with Washington over the divisive issues of border security and illegal immigration in the United States. "He is acting like a puppet, a plaything of foreign governments."
President Bush announced this week he would send up to 6,000 National Guard troops to support Border Patrol agents. |
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