Ambitions of Mexico First Lady Stir Questions and Opposition

When Mexico’s president and first lady walked into a poor neighborhood in the southeastern city of Merida last month, an excited crowd greeted them with shouts of “Marta! Marta!”

“They want to see her more than they want to see me,” President Vicente Fox joked. Then he said to the crowd: “Here she comes. Grab her!”

Willingly or not, the towering Fox is finding his presidency overshadowed by his ambitious wife. News out of Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, has been dominated this month by Marta Sahagun, her hints that she will run for her husband’s job, and the cloudy finances of Vamos Mexico, her private charity foundation.

This week, Congress ordered an audit of Fox’s office to determine whether public resources had been diverted to help run the charity, which critics say is a vehicle to promote Sahagun’s all-but-declared candidacy. It will be the first audit of the Mexican presidency since Fox’s election in 2000 ended 71 years of autocratic rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Fox, 61, is halfway through a lackluster presidency. He remains popular, but the opposition-controlled Congress has blocked most of his major goals, including fiscal and energy reforms deemed essential for lifting the country out of poverty.

Ineligible for a second term, Fox is accustomed to hearing rivals dismiss him as a lame duck. Now his wife has joined them in jockeying for the 2006 race, reinforcing what Mexican political analyst Denise Dresser calls “the widespread impression that her husband will accomplish little between now and then.”

Sahagun told the newspaper El Universal in January that she would make a “responsible decision” on whether to enter the race. She added: “You will have Marta around for a long time. I think Mexico is now ready to have a presidenta” -- a female president.

That remark threw Mexico’s politics into a frenzy.

Former President Miguel de la Madrid said a successful race by Sahagun “would be equivalent to a reelection” -- a practice that the Mexican Revolution was fought, nearly a century ago, to abolish.

“We could fall into something like a monarchy,” said Congressman Jesus Martinez of the Convergence Party, who this week introduced a bill to bar any relative or spouse of a president or state governor from seeking office until at least a year after that leader has left office.

Fox has said his wife “is free to make her own decisions” about her career.

But opposition in his center-right National Action Party is strong. One leader dismissed Sahagun’s presumed candidacy as “speculation a lot of people are having fun with but ... not the least bit serious.” Yet no other would-be contender in Fox’s party can match the first lady’s popularity. In most polls, she comes in second only to Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, who is an undeclared candidate and the early favorite to succeed Fox. Sahagun, 50, was a homemaker with three children from a previous marriage before she entered politics. After losing a race for mayor of her hometown, Celaya, in Fox’s state of Guanajuato, she joined his gubernatorial administration and served as his presidential spokeswoman before marrying him in July 2001.

In a country unaccustomed to high-profile first ladies, Sahagun says she enjoys “being a controversial woman.” She identifies herself as a feminist and champion of the poor.

Not content to raise funds for existing charities, as previous first ladies often did, Sahagun founded Vamos Mexico (Let’s Go, Mexico) in September 2001.

Critics have warned of a potential conflict between her influence as an advisor to Fox and her work soliciting corporate and individual donations for the foundation. Vamos Mexico duplicates the work of existing institutions, the critics say, while diverting donations away from them.

Unease over her charity made headlines this month after the Financial Times raised questions about what it called fuzzy accounting practices by the foundation and the lack of full audited statements.

From the statements it obtained, the British newspaper calculated that Vamos Mexico had donated to worthy causes 30% of about $14 million raised during its first 15 months. An additional 34%, the report said, went to administrative and operating expenses, more than the 10% norm for Mexican charities, and the rest formed part of a financial cushion.

The list of donors disclosed by the newspaper included individuals and companies that do business with the Mexican government.

Sahagun called the article a “defamation,” and Vamos Mexico insisted in a statement that its overhead expenses were a “considerably lower” proportion of total donations than the newspaper reported.

Congress is mounting a challenge on a different front. Unable to audit a private foundation, lawmakers Wednesday ordered an inquiry into what Congressman Manuel Camacho Solis of the PRD called “a widespread concern ... that funds from the president’s office are being used to support Vamos Mexico’s activities.”

Fox went on the air Thursday to accept the audit, saying his administration “has nothing to hide and nothing to fear.” He defended his wife’s foundation against any “ill intent to sow mistrust in the public’s mind” and insisted that the charity was getting “no money or other backing” from his government.