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 Editorials | June 2006 
Mexican Presidential Elections: The Firebrand on Bush's Doorstep
 David Usborne - Independent News and Media
| | Whatever happens on 2 July, it is not just Mexico that will feel the effects. |
Mexico's Manuel Lopez Obrador may follow Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales as the next Latin leftist leader. And if he wins a bitterly contested election next month, this time the revolution will be just across the US border.
It is Sunday afternoon and the people of Tizimin, a modest market town barely 100 miles west of Cancun but far removed from the prosperity of the tourist beaches of the Caribbean, are spilling out of brightly coloured bars after seeing Mexico beat Iran 3-1 in the World Cup. But before going home, they have one more spectacle to enjoy.
By the hundreds - many of the women dressed in the white embroidered dresses of Yucatan's Mayan heritage - they stream on foot and by bicycle into the main square enclosed on two sides by an 18th-century Franciscan cathedral and ruined convent. Waiting for them in the blazing sun are row upon row of low wooden seats facing a make-shift stage festooned in yellow banners and plastic bunting.
If the hearts of most Mexicans are beating harder in these days of early summer, it is not just because of soccer. Less than three weeks from a presidential election, they are facing a stark and potentially portentous choice: to support the candidate of the ruling centre-right PAN party of outgoing president Vicente Fox, or tack abruptly to the left with the socialist PRD party, whose charismatic, populist candidate, Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador, 52, is bringing his raucous campaign caravan into Tizimin today.
With so much at stake in a country that only saw democracy take hold fully in 2000 when Fox ended more than seven decades of single party rule, it is a race that has inevitably turned vicious, with insults and dark allegations traded daily and even a botched shooting in Mexico City involving family members of a jailed businessman claiming to have a video showing aides of Lopez Obrador accepting bribes.
Mexicans are entirely unaccustomed to political suspense of this kind. For several months, polls have shown Lopez Obrador in a dead heat with his PAN rival, Felipe Calderon. Yesterday, a new survey published in La Reforma newspaper gave the leftist a tiny lead of three points. Not too far behind in third place is the other main candidate, Roberto Madrazo, of the old PRI.
Whatever happens on 2 July, it is not just Mexico that will feel the effects. Latin America has seen a dramatic shift to the political left in recent years, notably with the coming to power eight years ago of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, followed by Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and, most recently, Evo Morales in Bolivia. Mexico, which is not only the immediate southern neighbour of the United States but also its largest trading partner, will emerge either as a bulkhead against the powerful populist tide or as the latest - and surely the most important - country in the region to embrace it.
If Calderon, 43, who has been distracted in recent days by allegations from the Lopez Obrador camp of unethical business dealings involving his brother-in-law, finally fends off the leftist challenge, it is the economy he will thank. After years of mediocre performance under Fox, the country achieved 5.5 per cent growth in the first quarter of this year with oil profits pouring into the national treasury. "It's the most important factor," says Cesar Castro of the Center for Economic Analysis in Mexico City. "The economy is doing well and Calderon is capitalising." The housing market is healthy, the peso is strong and inflation, for so long the plague of Latin America, is under control. More broadly, there is evidence that under President Fox, the middle class in Mexico has begun to expand.
It is precisely because of this progress that much of the business class and the educated ιlite view the possibility of a Lopez-Obrador victory with dread verging on panic. They worry that the model of open trading and fiscal conservatism followed by Fox will be abandoned and that, instead, Mexico, would fall back into old habits of out-of-control social spending and protectionism with rising debt, renewed inflation and perhaps a flight of foreign capital.
"Whether Fox did a good job or not, finally we have stability in Mexico after years of going from crisis to crisis," says Alejandro Rueda, 33, the manager of two sleek boutique hotels in Playa del Carmen, a booming resort town one hour south of Cancun. "I would be afraid if Lopez Obrador gets in, because I like this continuity in my life." In his five years as Mayor of Mexico City, Lopez Obrador - better known simply as AMLO - established a record of largesse that some saw as fiscal insanity. He drained the public purse giving cash handouts to the elderly and single mothers as well as embarking on massive public works programmes, notably adding a second tier to much of the city's trunk road system. His tenure, meanwhile, was marked by a deterioration of public safety in Mexico City to the point where much of its upper-middle class now lives behind high walls.
But there is something else worth remembering about Lopez Obrador's record of managing Mexico City, that teeming metropolis of almost 20 million people. When he resigned as mayor in 2005 to run for president, his approval rating was at 80 per cent. It was not just that he gave money to the poor but also that he managed to enter into a conversation with them and arouse their passions. Even detractors will admit that in the capital, Lopez Obrador became a phenomenon who could motivate millions to march in the streets when he needed their support. Now he is casting himself as the champion of Mexico's vast lower class, while painting his rivals as representatives of a privileged and corrupt old guard.
His campaign slogan - "For the Good of Everyone, the Poor First" - is potent because while the macro-economic numbers may be improving, the benefits are unevenly distributed. Joblessness among the poor, particularly away from the relatively prosperous north, remains endemic. It is this scarcity of employment and economic opportunity that has triggered the new wave of migration across the border into the United States that has reached near exodus proportions. Free trade was meant to bring higher living standards to all, but many poorer Mexicans do not feel those changes. As populist leaders have done elsewhere in Latin America, Lopez Obrador is promising to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots .
Calderon, a former energy minister who, by contrast, is rather bloodless on the campaign trail, has seized on the populist-leftist reputation of Lopez Obrador to demonise him as a firebrand and a "Danger to Mexico". In the spring, he ran negative television spots tying his rival to Chavez, widely regarded here as a polarising and destabilising figure. The federal election commission ruled that the ads broke its rules and ordered them withdrawn, but the message had already been delivered. In fact the comparison with Chavez is a little off. While he speaks of renegotiating some trade treaties, including the NAFTA pact with the US and Canada, Lopez Obrador has not pledged a programme of re-nationalisation nor is he a basher of the United States.
"He is not a populist, he is a nationalist," protests Marcela Nolasco, 50, a human rights delegate with Lopez Obrador's PRD party, who has joined the throng in Tizimin. "The difference is that he is willing to build up Mexico from the inside out as the only way to achieve real international strength." As we wait for the candidate to arrive - this will be the third of four rural campaign stops in Yucatan today - party officials on stage invite everyone to form lines and write down on pieces of paper what it is, above all, that they would like Lopez-Obrador to do for them as president. Tizimin is in livestock country and the farmers in the crowd all have one request: stop imports of cheap beef.
The meteorological omens, at least, seem to bode ill for Lopez Obrador. As his black, unarmoured, vehicle draws into the square, spots of rain turn into a tropical downpour. But then this is a politician who once walked all 560 miles from his native state of Tabasco to Mexico City to protest the outcome of a state governorship race he claimed was robbed from him by the then ruling PRI party. Undeterred, he wades into the crowd towards the stage, stopping to hug supporters, kiss cheeks and shake hands. Look at the faces of those who press forward to touch him and you see a devotion that might be the worship afforded a rock star.
While he seems touchy-feely while working the crowd, once at the microphone, Lopez Obrador unleashes a stump speech that is angry and almost hectoring in tone. His is an oratorical style that is compelling but also harsh and uncompromising. His critics accuse him of making endless promises that he will never be able to keep. The list today is certainly long. He speaks of spreading the tourism wealth from the beaches of Cancun across all of Yucatan and building a new superhighway linking some of its Mayan archaeological sites. He pledges to boost wages and expand the welfare payments he made in Mexico City to single mothers and the elderly nationwide. And, aware of his audience of farmers, he does indeed promise to bolster the price of beef.
Nor does he pretend that what he is proposing would not mean massive change for the country. "I invite you to transform Mexico out of poverty and marginalization," he exclaims. "I come here to reaffirm my commitment to you and I bring three vows with me: Not to lie, not to steal, not to betray you." He goes on: "We're not going to change only the jockey but also the horse." And he pours scorn on those who say his proposed platform of welfare spending would be unsustainable. "I won't accept the tiresome song of technocrats telling me it's not possible," he says with unrepentant defiance. "That's why we're going to change the economic politics of this country."
Among those still to be convinced is Jose Gonzalez, 42, a street food vendor in Tizimin with six children all working in the tourism industry in Cancun. He admits he his considering casting a vote for the first time in his life, possibly for Lopez Obrador. But he remains dubious. "They all make promises, but no one delivers," he says. But standing nearby is Alejo Cano, 44, who cleans floors in Tizimin's main hospital. "I will be voting for AMLO because I haven't had a pay increase in over six years. He can make it happen."
It is on people like Alejo Cano that Lopez Obrador is counting. Speaking to the crowds in Tizimin, with water sticking the grey cotton of his shirt to his chest, he thinks he sees the passion he will need on voting day to win and lead Mexico down a new leftist path for the coming six years. "It rains and it rains," the politician declares, "and still they stay here with me. If you were followers of the other parties you would have gone home already". |
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