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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2006 
Mexican Leftists to Disrupt Fox Speech
 Catherine Bremer - Reuters
| | Vicente Fox in a file photo. Fox faces a rough ride at his last state of the nation speech on Friday, with leftist lawmakers planning to hijack the ceremony to protest at what they say was election fraud. (Monika Flueckiger/Reuters) |
Mexican President Vicente Fox faces a rough ride at his last state of the nation speech on Friday, with leftist lawmakers planning to hijack the ceremony to protest at what they say was election fraud.
Fox, hailed as a democracy hero in 2000 when he ended 71 years of one-party rule, steps down in December but political unrest over the July 2 election may cloud his legacy.
Legislators from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, hope to prevent Fox from making the annual presidential address to Congress.
Aside from their allegations that vote counts were tampered with, leftists accuse Fox of illegally aiding conservative Felipe Calderon's campaign and funding his attacks on Lopez Obrador, who he called a danger to Mexico.
PRD deputies are expected to either drown Fox out with heckling or physically stop him from taking the podium to speak.
"The president won't be able to deliver his speech tomorrow. It will be a first in the history of this ceremony," said Lopez Obrador advisor Manuel Camacho Solis.
Calderon, who won the election by 244,000 votes out of 41 million, is expected to be named president-elect any day after the top electoral court last week threw out Lopez Obrador's fraud claims and refused a full recount he demanded.
Camacho Solis said the leftist candidate now acknowledges the court will soon declare Calderon the winner, although he insists the election was rigged.
Congress is surrounded by riot barricades following scuffles there between police and leftists earlier this month. A heavy riot police presence is expected.
MARCH ON CONGRESS?
Lopez Obrador told his supporters to gather in the central Zocalo square three hours ahead of the speech at 7 p.m. (0000 GMT) but he did not say if they would try to march on the Congress building several miles away.
Deputies from Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, have vowed to try to stop the leftists from halting the address and with political tension higher than it has been in years, it could turn ugly on the floor of the lower chamber.
"The president insulted our movement and of course our movement will respond," the PRD president Leonel Cota said.
Government officials have suggested the president might not even try to speak if the atmosphere is too rowdy, instead handing a written copy of his speech to Congress.
The action inside promises to be as dramatic as when Fox donned a pair of paper ears in Congress as an opposition lawmaker in 1988 and gave a mocking verbal imitation of then-president-elect Carlos Salinas, who is widely believed to have fiddled his election win.
With 52 senators and 206 deputies, the PAN has the biggest single bloc in the Congress and hopes to ally itself to the formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party to pass economic reforms. |
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