| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2009 
Swine Flu Doctor Buoys Calderón Ahead of Vote
 Thomas Black - Bloomberg News
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June 09, 2009
| | Health Minister José Angel Córdova (L), President Felipe Calderón (Cuartoscuro/Francisco Santos) | |
Monterrey - Mexican Health Minister José Angel Córdova, a self-styled "doctor from the trenches," may turn out to be President Felipe Calderón's savior as his party girds for mid- term elections in July.
Córdova's measures to fight a swine flu outbreak by closing schools and factories won wide support for the administration at a time when drug-related violence and the worst recession since 1995 were draining its popularity, said political science professor Jorge Chabat.
"All the opinion polls and international organizations approved the federal government's performance," said Chabat, who works at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City and says he has no political affiliation. "This should have a positive impact" for Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN.
Before the epidemic that killed 103 and sickened 5,563 by June 2, the PAN faced losing its status as the movement with the most deputies in the 500-seat lower house of Congress, according to a poll by Mexico City-based Consulta Mitofsky.
If backing for the anti-flu campaign translates into votes, the party may maintain the lead it has enjoyed since 2006, helping the president push through labor and other laws needed to spur the economy, Chabat said.
The main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, leads President Felipe Calderón's National Action Party ahead of July's mid-term elections, according to a poll released by Mexico City-based Consulta Mitofsky. The PRI would take 34 percent of the vote while Calderón's PAN would get 31 percent, according to the poll conducted between May 23 and May 26. The Party of the Democratic Revolution, which lost the 2006 presidential election by less than a percentage point, had 15 percent support, the poll said. The poll of 1,000 people has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, the polling group said.
RESTORING CONFIDENCE
In a Reforma newspaper poll taken on May 8, 63 percent of 410 respondents graded the emergency measures as good to very good. Córdova, a French-trained gastroenterologist, scored the highest marks, with 56 percent rating him good or very good. Calderón followed with 54 percent.
The president's approval rating has risen to 69 percent, the highest since he took office in December 2006, according to another Reforma poll of 1,515 adults from May 22 to May 24. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
"The image that most Mexicans have is that Mexico was a responsible global citizen," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"There is a lift" for the 46-year-old president's party, Peschard-Sverdrup said.
Córdova, 55, took charge of the campaign to contain the new strain of flu on April 23, when he received confirmation a 5- year-old boy in a remote village had contracted the virus.
"We didn't know how this was going to behave," Córdova said in an interview at his Mexico City office, where he had a plasma screen and teleconferencing equipment installed after the outbreak. "We rapidly set off all the alarms."
That night, Córdova announced a partial shutdown of schools that he later extended to all academic institutions and nonessential businesses, including restaurants and factories.
In daily briefings, the former director of the school of medicine at the University of Guanajuato in the city of León, gave instructions on how to combat the spread of the virus by using a facemask, washing hands and refraining from kissing.
"I'm a doctor from the trenches," said Córdova, who's the son of a shoe-factory owner and trained at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France. "I know what it's like to receive patients continually and above all patients who are scared, worried and sometimes panicked."
Arnold Monto, a member of the World Health Organization's, WHO, pandemic alert committee and an epidemiology professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said Córdova followed correct procedure.
'ACTING PRUDENTLY'
"This is one of the reasons why no restrictions were ever put on the country by the WHO because Mexico was acting prudently," Monto said.
Manlio Fabio Beltrones, head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the Senate, said Córdova overreacted and hurt an economy already in recession.
Victor Alanis, a gardener who hasn't decided how he will vote in the July elections, said Calderón's support of the health minister's actions may help tip the balance in favor of the PAN.
"It shows he wants to do the best for Mexico," said Alanis, 38, who lives in the town of Congregacion La Boca, 48 kilometers (30 miles) south of Monterrey, the country's industrial capital. "That's something I like." |
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