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 Editorials | Issues | March 2008 
Mexico Leftist Seizes Oil Reform to Drive Comeback
 Catherine Bremer - Reuters
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Mexico City – A firebrand Mexican leftist whose 2006 presidential bid sent jitters through Wall Street is back, leading protests against energy reforms after a year in the political wilderness.
Andres Manuel López Obrador jammed Mexico City with protest camps for weeks after the July 2006 election, claiming his defeat was rigged, but he then fell from the radar screen as President Felipe Calderón took power, pushing through laws and battling drug cartels.
Now the anti-capitalist has seized on opposition to Calderón's oil reform plans to launch a comeback that could decide whether he survives to get another shot at the presidency in 2012 or fades away for good.
López Obrador has an army of followers among the poor. Thousands came out late last month to cheer on his first big rally against talks in Congress on letting more private capital into Mexico's oil sector, under state control since 1938.
His support in the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, will be tested when it votes for a new leader in a March 16 contest pitting López Obrador's ally Alejandro Encinas against a more moderate rival, Jesus Ortega.
A poll last week suggested that Encinas will win. That would set the PRD, the No. 2 political force in Mexico, on a more radical path with López Obrador as its figurehead.
But an Ortega victory would hurt López Obrador's political future and his ability to obstruct an oil reform.
“It is important to him. It's in his interest to keep the party under his control,” said Marcela Bobadilla at Mexico's IMEP think tank. “And it's crucial in terms of political negotiations.”
A former indigenous rights activist who briefly lived in a mud-floor hut among poor Mayans and is famous for his colorful jibes at opponents, López Obrador spent last year touring rural towns across Mexico to rally his supporters.
He now threatens to blockade highways, airports and oil installations to protest legislation being mulled to allow profit-sharing alliances in oil. López Obrador and other left-wingers say that would be tantamount to privatization.
One in five people polled by the daily newspaper Milenio last month said they would join his oil protests.
“He enjoys support on the issue even among those who do not support him politically,” said political analyst Federico Estevez at Mexico City's ITAM university.
NO BLUFF
“It's not a bluff. He is convinced it has to be done,” said Manuel Camacho Solis, López Obrador's 2006 campaign strategist, of the blockade plan. “But the PRD may try to persuade him that certain things are not suitable as they will cost votes.”
Core PRD lawmakers back the protests, saying they reinforce their stance in Congress.
Few expect the street protests to trigger instability or hurt Calderón, whose popularity ratings are above 60 percent.
But going too far with blockades could irk moderates who want a candidate for 2012 that the world will take seriously. Even some of his supporters were put off by López Obrador's post-election protests and his refusal to accept defeat.
López Obrador cannot single-handedly derail an oil reform. Even if all of his party's lawmakers oppose it, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, could give Calderón's conservatives the votes they need.
But with mid-term congressional elections set for next year, the oil protests could put pressure on the PRI to also oppose the reforms so as not to be seen as giving away Mexico's oil.
Half the country opposes loosening the barriers around the oil sector, according to two recent newspaper polls.
“If they rob us of oil they convert us into slaves on our own land. It's a violation of our sovereignty,” López Obrador said last week.
As the debate heats up, the PRI has backtracked from a stance that was initially more open to joint ventures in deepwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico.
The campaign against oil reforms could spur López Obrador to try again for the presidency.
“If he feels he could win in 2012 he'll seek the candidacy,” said Camacho Solis.
But if the PRD drops him, many see a successor in Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a modern-minded leftist who has brought the capital cycle paths and smoke-free bars.
(Editing by Kieran Murray) |
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