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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2008 
Controversial Hitler Ad Ordered Off Mexican TV
 Anahi Rama - Reuters
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Mexico City - Mexico's top electoral body ordered broadcasters to stop running a controversial TV ad on Monday that compares a firebrand leftist leading a siege of Congress to dictators Hitler and Pinochet.
The TV ad, funded by a Mexican businessman angry at a blockade of Congress by opposition lawmakers trying to derail an oil reform plan, says the antics of protest leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are endangering democracy.
"The complaints committee decided unanimously to order the withdrawal of the spot from today," a spokesman for the Federal Electoral Institute told Reuters.
Leftists seized Congress podiums on April 10 to block a government proposal to lower barriers to private investment in the oil sector, controlled by the state since 1938. The action has left Congress paralyzed.
"Who shuts congresses? In 1933, Adolf Hitler in Germany. In 1939, Benito Mussolini in Italy. In 1973, Augusto Pinochet of Chile," the ad says, over grainy footage of the Nazi leader, his fascist ally in Italy and Chile's late military dictator.
The 30-second spot was a flashback to conservative ads run in the 2006 election campaign calling the former rights activist and then presidential hopeful a danger to Mexico.
"Our democracy is in danger. Our peace is at risk. Mexico does not deserve this," the voice-over said.
The left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution had asked the electoral institute to order the spot off the air.
Lopez Obrador infuriated President Felipe Calderon by claiming his narrow defeat in the 2006 was fraudulent and paralyzing central Mexico City with sit-in protest camps.
Concerned about increasingly heated rhetoric and street protests over the energy proposal, Calderon's National Action Party had also condemned the ad and said it should be withdrawn.
Left-wingers, who say the proposed energy bill would amount to a sneaking privatization of oil monopoly Pemex, have vowed to stay put until Congress closes for the summer on April 30, unless the PAN offers a four-month debate on the issue.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman) |
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