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Will the real Andrés Manuel López Obrador please stand up?
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie May 29, 2005 01:15pm |
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| Category | Perspective |
| Media | Newspaper - Economist (The) |
| News Date | Thursday, May 26, 2005 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | EACH weekday morning at 6.30am, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-wing mayor of Mexico City, gives a press conference. Nowadays, these affairs feature fewer queries about traffic congestion or water shortages and many about economic and foreign policy. A presidential election is not due until July 2006. But only two questions matter in Mexican politics today. Can anyone stop Mr López Obrador from becoming the next president? And if he wins, who will he most resemble: a responsible social democrat like Brazil's Lula or a reckless, authoritarian populist like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez?
The answers matter not just to Mexico but to the United States, its neighbour and partner (with Canada) in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). After its 1982 debt crisis, Mexico moved steadily towards a free-market economy and democracy. These steps culminated in 2000 in the election of Vicente Fox, a pro-American businessman who ended seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In office, Mr Fox has proved a huge disappointment. He has failed to push through promised economic reforms, or to set up new political institutions to replace the all-powerful presidency of the PRI's rule. Although the economy grew by 4.4% last year, this followed three years of stagnation, which has undermined public support for reform.
The result is that next year's election seems likely to see a restoration of Mexico's ancien régime—in one guise or another. Although Mr López Obrador heads a left-wing party, he was a member of the PRI until 1988. Opinion polls give him around 40% of the vote. His support was boosted by a misguided government effort to bar him from standing by pressing contempt of court charges, a ploy which collapsed on May 4th. Most political analysts believe that his chief opponent will be the PRI's Roberto Madrazo, an economic pragmatist but an old-style political boss. |
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