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 Business News | June 2006 
Candidate Reassures Business Leaders
 Sandra Dibble - Union-Tribune
| | Andrés Manuel López Obrador greeted supporters at a rally yesterday in Tijuana. (Jorge Duenes/Reuters) |
Tijuana – On a swing through Mexico's northern border region yesterday, Mexico's leftist presidential candidate sought to reassure business leaders that they have a place in his vision for a more just Mexico.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has built his campaign on vows to support society's poorest and most vulnerable segments, said that if elected, he would include the business sector in “a national accord to move our country forward.”
With a little more than two weeks left until the July 2 election, López Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, is in a dead heat with conservative Felipe Calderón, a member of the National Action Party, or PAN. A national poll released yesterday by the Mexico City newspaper Reforma gave López Obrador, a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, a two-point lead over Calderón, 37 percent to 35 percent. Roberto Madrazo, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, trailed in third place, with 23 percent.
“I am against . . . the corruption that has so badly hurt our country, but I have no problem at all with the businessmen of this country,” López Obrador, 53, told a few thousand supporters gathered yesterday morning in downtown Tijuana.
Before the public rally, the candidate had met for close to an hour at Tijuana's airport with a group of about 20 Tijuana business leaders. The gathering was arranged through the national business group COPARMEX.
“We are grateful for his interest, but we need to know more,” said Ariosto Manrique of COPARMEX's Tijuana branch and head of the National Commission of Young Entrepreneurs.
Of the five registered presidential candidates, López Obrador is the only one who has failed to answer a set of 20 questions posed by the civic group Sociedad en Movimiento, to which COPARMEX belongs, Manrique said. He said the candidate promised that they would get their answers.
Shortly afterward, as he addressed supporters who waved the yellow flags of his party on Avenida Constitucion, López Obrador appeared confident of victory.
“I will return to Tijuana as president of the republic,” López Obrador said, pledging that his first meeting with the business sector following the election will be with Tijuana's business leaders.
Northern Mexico is where López Obrador is weakest, and polls place him behind the PAN candidate in that part of the country.
Still, with the national contest so close, “the relevance of every vote is at play, they're fighting for every one,” said Tonatiuh Guillén López, a political analyst at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. In Baja California, “the fundamental dispute is whether López Obrador will pull ahead of the PRI.”
López Obrador's campaign strategists in the state acknowledge that Calderón is in the lead and is likely to win more votes here. But they say they hope to win over voters whose disenchantment with politics has kept them away from the polls in recent elections.
Baja California has been a PAN stronghold since 1989, but its 2.02 million eligible voters account for only 3 percent of Mexico's total of 71.35 million. While Calderon is strongest in the north, López Obrador holds the advantage in the more populous regions of southern and central Mexico. |
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