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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2006 
Mexican Presidential Hopefuls Wrap Up Campaigns
 Patrick Moser - AFP
| | Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), seen here on 09 June 2006. Mexico's presidential hopefuls wrapped up their electoral campaigns, four days ahead of a vote that looks set to be a tight two-way race between a leftist populist and a conservative. (AFP/Luis Acosta) |
Mexico's presidential hopefuls wrapped up their electoral campaigns, four days ahead of a vote that looks set to be a tight two-way race between a leftist populist and a conservative.
Former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who leads the race by a razor thin margin, was due to address a massive rally in the capital's historic Zocalo square, and conservative Felipe Calderon scheduled his final meeting in Guadalaraja, Mexico's second largest city.
Opinion polls give Lopez Obrador, 52, a lead of two to five points over Calderon, 43. Roberto Madrazo, of the once mighty Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is ranked in third position.
Lopez Obrador's campaign got a last minute boost when a 150,000-strong miners union called off a planned strike and declared its support for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate.
For his part, Calderon, of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), got tacit backing from the country's main business group, which aired television spots urging Mexicans to vote for economic stability and warning against the danger of "a change of course."
The spots prompted an angry outburst by Lopez Obrador, who claimed they were financed by "white collar criminals." In his campaign, the former mayor, known by his initials AMLO, has regularly lashed out at privileged Mexicans, saying most of them evaded taxes.
Highly popular as Mexico City's mayor from 2000 to 2005, Lopez Obrador has attracted widespread support among the millions of Mexicans who struggle to survive in a country where about half of the population lives in poverty.
But many better-off Mexicans and foreign investors worry about the populist rhetoric of the leftist candidate.
"Lopez Obrador does not have real proposals to improve the situation of the poor, what he proposes are recipes of the 1970s when the emphasis was on the state and not the market, without taking into consideration the fact that 80 percent of the country's wealth is generated by the market," said Guillermo Valdez, of the Group of Economists and Associates consultancy.
As a candidate from the ruling party, Calderon is likely to draw political capital from the country's healthy economic performance. After remaining stagnant for years, the economy grew by 5.5 percent in the first quarter of the year.
But AMLO says the wealth is not trickling down to depressed rural areas or to the millions of urban poor in Mexico, forcing people to risk their lives to illegally cross the border into the United States.
About 10 million Mexicans live in the United States, where authorities have stepped up measures to halt illegal immigration.
The leading candidates have both pledged to create jobs to halt the migration of Mexicans, but differ on how to achieve this.
Lopez Obrador has called for major new infrastructure projects he says would rapidly create jobs, and which would be funded in part through the 10 billion dollars he believes he can slash from the annual budget by battling corruption and tax evasion, and by reducing the salaries of senior government officials.
Calderon, a staunchly conservative former energy minister, wants to encourage foreign investment, allow private partnerships in the state-run oil sector and slash corporate taxes.
The 71 million eligible voters will also be casting ballots for congressional candidates, while three state governors and a new Mexico City mayor will also be elected on Sunday. |
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