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 Editorials | Issues | November 2006 
Once Mexico's Democracy Hero, Fox Fades Out
 Alistair Bell - Reuters
| | Mexican President Vicente Fox listens to a speech during the inauguration of a training center for elite athletes in Mexico City November 27, 2006. (Tomas Bravo/Reuters) |
Mexican President Vicente Fox, a tall and charismatic rancher, made history when he broke 71 years of single-party rule at elections in 2000.
Those dizzy days quickly faded.
Fox leaves office this week with his promises to win greater access to the United States for Mexican immigrants, reshape his nation's economy and defeat violent drug cartels left unfulfilled.
Under Fox, 64, Mexico avoided the type of economic crisis that blighted other Latin American countries like Argentina, and the often affable president's popularity rating is high.
But Fox never again came near the heights of July 2, 2000 when he ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled longer than any party in the world except the Soviet Communists.
"The problem with Fox is he didn't know how to govern," said writer and commentator Homero Aridjis. "It's what happens to a lot of revolutionaries and opposition leaders who know how to fight for power but don't know how to rule."
Fox failed in his main foreign policy aim: convincing the United States to soften its immigration laws to allow more Mexicans to work there.
President Bush finally buried Mexico's hopes in October when he approved hundreds of miles of fencing on the border to curb illegal immigration.
Former aides say Fox was unlucky the September 11 attacks made the United States more interested in border security than immigration reform, something Mexico could not have foreseen.
"Al Qaeda didn't let us know in advance about September 11, so it was difficult to predict that," said Jorge Castaneda, Fox's foreign minister until 2003.
At home, a Congress dominated by the PRI blocked Fox's planned energy, fiscal and labor reforms that could have helped Mexico's export-based economy recover ground lost to Asia.
"The main failure was fruitless relationship with Congress," said Sen. Federico Doring from Fox's conservative National Action Party, or PAN.
UNINTERESTED
Fox has been distant and uninterested in daily issues since July's presidential election was won by fellow conservative Felipe Calderon, who takes office on Friday.
A war between drug gangs has descended into barbarity, and a political crisis in the state of Oaxaca has turned violent.
"For many of us, he left a country in crisis. There has been no government in Mexico since July," said Aridjis.
The left, which narrowly lost the election and claims fraud, says Fox created political division by backing Calderon. Leftist street protests are expected at Friday's inauguration.
Happier addressing peasant farmers or opening supermarkets in dusty towns, the gaffe-prone Fox was uncomfortable with the backroom wheeling and dealing of Mexican politics.
"He is interested in a different lifestyle," said Alejandro Gonzalez, another PAN senator. "He is a country man."
A former Coca-Cola executive, Fox did manage to keep Mexico's economy on an even keel, unlike many of his predecessors who oversaw financial turmoil like the "Tequila Crisis" devaluation of the mid-1990s.
Comforted by macroeconomic stability, Mexico's stock market has soared by over 320 percent since Fox came in and inflation, long the bane of Latin America, is down to around 4 percent.
Government programs offering cheap credit to finance the building of new homes has given home ownership to millions in the growing lower middle class.
"He said he was going to do it and he did it. The housing program was the best thing Fox did," said accountant Claudia Murguia, 30, who bought her first house two years ago in the Mexico City satellite town of Tecamac thanks to Fox.
As his presidency stretched on, Fox became increasingly frustrated with Congress and the media.
"I don't find this world very attractive," he complained in a Reuters interview this year, saying Mexican politics was full of backstabbers, liars and slanderers.
In off-the-record comments to another news organization that were later splashed across Mexican newspapers, Fox said earlier this month: "I can talk freely. Now I can say any nonsense. It really doesn't matter, I'm on my way out." |
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