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 Editorials | Issues | November 2006 
Activists Call on Fox to Head Talks Over Conflict
 El Universal
| | Mexico's President Vicente Fox shadow his eyes as he attends the ceremony to begin the rebuilding of Mexico's Embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, Friday, Nov. 3, 2006. (AP Photo/Marcelo Hernandez) |
Oaxaca - Activists who have directed months of protests here called on President Vicente Fox to personally head negotiations on a resolution to the state´s ongoing crisis. If he refused, they said they would continue a civil resistance campaign aimed at ousting Gov. Ulises Ruiz.
Negotiations between representatives from the Interior Secretariat and the Oaxaca People´s Assembly (APPO) had been scheduled to begin on Monday, but did not. Representatives from the group that helped direct five months of protests in the embattled city argued Monday that past talks with the secretariat officials had failed, and only Fox himself could help find a solution.
They demanded Fox respond to the call by Tuesday, saying if he did not they would block highways and take over municipal palaces in the state.
Top Interior Secretariat officials began talks with the APPO and the local chapter of the teachers union in August, with the government demanding the teachers return to classes. But federal riot police were sent in a week ago after the negotiations broke down and violence surged in the city.
Also on Monday, APPO representatives gathered for a round table headed by a local civic group made up of artists and intellectuals, such as painter Francisco Toledo and the rector of the Benito Juárez Autonomous University, Francisco Martínez Neri. The event was held in the ex-Santo Domingo Convent adjacent to the plaza where the APPO has set up its headquarters after being forced out of the city Zócalo by federal police last week.
Following the talks, the group endorsed the APPO´s demands that Ruiz resign and the federal police withdraw from the city.
However, a separate civic group on Monday called for the federal police to remain and criticized the activists, highlighting divisions in the city after five months of unrest.
Meanwhile, a representative from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) called on Ruiz´s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to work out an internal agreement for the governor to resign and be replaced by another PRI politician.
"No one is disputing that the PRI should govern the state and no one wants to take this post away from them," said Fernando Belauzarán, a member of the PRD´s executive council and the party´s delegate to Oaxaca. He added Ruiz´s departure would be a critical step towards defusing the conflict and said that his party would not call for a new election.
"We only want a rapid solution," he said. "We know that if there were elections right now the PRI would have a very difficult time. The only thing we are asking them to do is to take out the only obstacle in the path (to a resolution)."
However, in an interview on Monday, Undersecretary of the Interior Arturo Chávez said that only dialogue - not Ruiz´s resignation - would solve the crisis. |
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