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 Editorials | Issues | November 2006 
Calderón to Face Complex Panorama
 El Universal
| | Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon, center, poses with his new cabinet, from left, Juan Mourino, Head of the Office of the Presidency, Francisco Ramirez, Interior Secretary, Patricia Espinosa, Foreign Secretary and German Martinez, Comptroller General, in Mexico City, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. President-elect Felipe Calderon on Tuesday named key members of his Cabinet, choosing a career ambassador as his foreign secretary and a controversial governor as his interior secretary. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) |
Felipe Calderón will have his work cut out when he is sworn in this week as president of Mexico, a nation where more than half the 103 million inhabitants live in poverty, where warring drug cartels are on a killing spree and where the nearly two-thirds of voters who didn´t cast ballots for him are, at best, deeply skeptical of his intentions.
Facing this extremely complex panorama, Calderón must undertake the task of national reconciliation after the country was polarized by the July 2 elections, in which the conservative won by a razor-thin 0.56 percent margin over Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador, who last week proclaimed himself the "legitimate president" before tens of thousands of supporters in Mexico City, has promised to establish an "alternative government" that will put pressure on the Calderón administration.
Lawmakers from the left- leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), meanwhile, threaten to prevent Calderón from taking the oath at Friday´s ceremony in Congress.
Calderón is inheriting a state of anarchy with much left undone in both the social and political spheres, such as the rebellion by civic groups in the southern state of Oaxaca demanding Gov. Ulises Ruiz´s resignation.
An atmosphere of brutal violence also reigns in the country, unleashed by organized crime during the six years of the Vicente Fox administration that has taken an unofficial toll of 8,000 dead, dozens of them decapitated or burned.
Calderón´s challenge will be to face up to the criminal organizations, better armed than the police, with law-enforcement institutions that have been corrupted by the drug traffickers who offer them a choice of "money or lead," meaning they can accept bribes to look the other way or die trying to enforce the law.
More than half of all Mexicans are poor and half a million of them try each year to cross over into the United States to find jobs, an escape valve slated to be squeezed shut to some extent by the construction of a double- fence along the U.S. border.
Each year 1 million young people enter the labor market which cannot place most of them, even at the low wages being offered.
Of a workforce of 44 million, only about 26 million have regular wages, a little more than 16 million are underemployed - many work in the informal economy - while the rest are idle.
During his electoral campaign Calderón called himself "the jobs president," a goal he will seek to achieve through investment and infrastructure, for which he has named an experienced economic team lead by Agustín Carstens, a former top executive of the International Monetary Fund.
According to some analysts, this team will have to deal with private monopolies that force Mexican consumers to pay much higher bank fees and telephone rates than their better-off counterparts in the United States.
Yet, as other observers have noted, those very same monopolists helped Calderón get elected, and he may be reluctant to take them on.
At the same time, the new president will hope to succeed where fellow conservative Fox failed in opening up the state-run energy sector to private capital.
Although the economy shows stability without the shocks of devaluations, inflation or the flight of capital that has marked the end of other presidential terms in the recent past, its rate of growth - which averaged just 2 percent annually under Fox - is woefully inadequate for a country with so many unmet needs.
Calderón had a brief sojourn at the Energy Secretariat that acquainted him with the serious problems of the nation´s principal company, state-run oil giant Pemex, weighed down by an excessive tax burden, lack of investment and a large staff represented by a powerful union.
Moreover, as Pemex officials warn, the reserves in Cantarell, the offshore field that currently accounts for nearly 80 percent of Mexico´s oil output, will be exhausted in 10 years and crude will have to be pumped from deeper waters with resources that Pemex doesn´t have.
Mexico, one of the world´s leading crude exporters and a crucial supplier to the United States, is also coping with a reduction in the windfall it enjoyed thanks to a surge in global oil prices that appears to be over, at least for the moment.
The president-elect has given assurances that both Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission will continue to be state-run, although analysts believe that legal devices will be sought to permit private investment.
Calderón is experienced in legislative tasks and has already given signs that he will seek accords with the opposition to proceed with the structural reforms that stagnated under Fox as a result of his constant clashes with Congress.
Mexico: Calderon To Swear In Despite Occupation
stratfor.com
Mexican Chamber of Deputies President Jorge Zermeno said Nov. 29 President-elect Felipe Calderon will be sworn in at the lower chamber of Congress, as is legally stipulated, whether it be at the podium or not.
Supporters of defeated presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador charged the podium Nov. 28 to prevent Calderon from swearing in at the legislature. Calderon supporters tried to prevent the move, and both groups currently occupy the podium.
Mexican Deps for Alternate Swear-in Site
Prensa Latina
After clashes between deputies of the National Action and Democratic Revolution Parties, the President of the Chamber of Senators insists on the search for an alternate place for the power transfer.
Manlio Fabio Beltrones called on the political forces, especially on the Democratic Revolution Party, to analyze the matter on Wednesday and reach a political solution.
"If the Chamber of Deputies continues to be taken by legislators of the different parties, then naturally and logically there must be a change on the headquarters," he pointed out.
However, Coordinator of National Action at the Senate Santiago Creel confirmed the transfer would take place at the San Lazaro Legislative Palace against all odds.
Since Tuesday the main hall of that facility has been taken by deputies of both organizations in an attempt to facilitate the investiture of President elect Felipe Calderon on December 1 and in an attempt of others to prevent it.
Several clashes have taken place, one leaving four hurt. |
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