Mexico’s Impeachment

Once merely disappointing, the state of Mexico’s democracy in the era of Vicente Fox has become alarming. It’s hard to believe that only five years after the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s inspiring defeat at the polls, the PRI and Fox’s National Action Party are conspiring to bar a popular leftist candidate -- Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- from the ballot in next year’s presidential election. It’s a foolish move that is tarnishing the credibility of the political system and is bound to backfire, enhancing Lopez Obrador’s popularity.

On Thursday, Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies voted to strip Lopez Obrador of his immunity from prosecution, an extraordinary move that could make him ineligible to run for the presidency. The mayor faces charges of disregarding a 2001 court order to stop construction of a short hospital access road over private land. In a country accustomed to rampant corruption, a weak judiciary and a culture of executive abuse of power, this charge is the equivalent of a traffic violation -- hardly the type of high crime that should trigger a process akin to impeachment. Under Mexican law, a candidate facing charges cannot run for the presidency, so the mayor would be barred from the race if the case were still pending next Jan. 15, the deadline for candidates to register.

We should hasten to add that Lopez Obrador, who leads in the polls, is not a particularly appealing candidate for the presidency. Capitalizing on widespread disenchantment with Mexico’s experiment with freer markets, Lopez Obrador threatens to take Mexico on a journey back in time, to a more socialist orientation that would seal the fate of his low-income supporters. He offers a great deal of messianic rhetoric backed by ill-advised policy prescriptions, including adamant opposition to privatizing Mexico’s oil and electricity sectors, which are in dire need of outside investment. More worrisome is Lopez Obrador’s penchant for incendiary demagoguery that seems to echo the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. He also has surrounded himself with pols entangled in corruption scandals.

It’s understandable, therefore, that Mexico’s other parties and its business elite are alarmed at the prospects of a Lopez Obrador presidency. But this crude attempt to bar him from the race only makes the mayor’s opponents look desperate and insincere in their professed devotion to the rule of law. By turning him into a martyr, the PRI and PAN legislators ensured that Lopez Obrador will emerge far more popular, and radical, than he already was.

And Mexico, which in recent years had achieved a measure of political and economic stability, is in for a period of tumultuous uncertainty. It would have been far preferable for the mayor’s rivals to try to beat him cleanly, at the polls.