Mexican Official Quits and Criticizes

With a blistering attack on the boss, President Vicente Fox’s chief of staff resigned Monday, saying the Mexican leader’s “permissive attitude” toward his wife’s presidential ambitions was giving the administration the same undemocratic taint as the old ruling party Fox unseated four years ago.

“The desire for a government to decide who the next president will be or will not be was the original sin of the old regime,” Alfonso Durazo wrote in a 19-page resignation letter. “The issue of presidential succession is operating more under the logic of the old regime than that of a government of transition.”

It was the sharpest public rebuke of Fox by an administration insider since the rancher-politician swept to power in July 2000 elections by promising a “government of change” after 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Fox’s office issued a statement Monday saying it “does not share either the points of view or the reasons” cited by Durazo for quitting.

Yet the president, 62, has been unwilling or unable to curb the undeclared presidential campaign of first lady Marta Sahagun, 51, who tours the country handing out donations from her Vamos Mexico foundation. In May, Fox scolded Energy Secretary Felipe Calderon for appearing to launch a rival presidential bid, prompting Calderon to leave the government.

Durazo said it was an increasingly common perception that “presidential power is exercised by a couple.” Though Mexico might be “ready for a woman to reach the presidency,” he said, it was “not prepared to have the president leave the presidency to his wife.”

The criticism by Durazo, a lawyer-bureaucrat who defected from the PRI, reflects wider disenchantment with Fox.

Although the president’s approval ratings hover around 60%, a larger proportion of Mexicans tell pollsters that his administration has failed to deliver on promises of sweeping reforms and a better economy. On Sunday, Fox’s center-right National Action Party lost governor’s races in three northern states.

“The wave of hope that came with the change [of government] is receding,” Durazo wrote. He faulted Fox for running an undisciplined Cabinet whose members “sing out of tune” and for failing to attempt alliances with the PRI and other opposition parties that together outnumber the PAN in Congress.

To many Mexican commentators, Fox’s shortcomings have made him a lame duck, focusing attention on the race to succeed him. Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was the front-runner until this year, when a corruption scandal at City Hall erased his advantage over Sahagun and other hopefuls for the 2006 election.

In an oblique reference to that scandal, Durazo criticized the Fox administration for trying to further damage the mayor politically by launching a criminal investigation and backing impeachment proceedings against him in Congress.

Sahagun has been reported to be pushing a strategy of aggressive attacks on opposition parties and candidates, over objections by Durazo and other presidential aides. Unless Fox stands above partisan politics, the former aide warned, the presidential succession race could degenerate into violence.

Durazo’s resignation was “a blow to Fox and Marta, who are becoming more and more isolated,” said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst.

“There is a growing atmosphere of political confrontation that Fox does not want to see,” he said.