Mexico City Mayor Talks Economics

Populist Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Wednesday sketched a series of economic initiatives he would fight for in his still-unofficial campaign for the nation’s presidency, even as he braced for congressional action that could derail his ambition and leave him open to criminal prosecution.

The 51-year-old mayor, a member of the Democratic Revolution Party, leads comfortably in voter preference polls for the 2006 presidential election. He has built a wide following in the nation’s capital for policies including monthly pensions for seniors; free school supplies; and jobs generated by public works projects, among them a new elevated freeway system.

Meeting with foreign reporters Wednesday, he echoed other Latin American leaders’ disenchantment with free market reforms of the last two decades. The next Mexican president should seek alternatives to the free trade and privatization model that Mexico has followed to no great advantage, he said, for the last 20 years.

“The people are not in agreement with it. They are looking for an alternative for change,” said Lopez Obrador, adding that he would place more emphasis on government investment in public works.

He also said he would seek to restructure Mexico’s public debt but emphasized that the government would continue to pay it off rather than default.

However, a legal process soon to reach a climax may complicate, if not cut short, his political future. Mexico’s Congress is expected to vote early next month on whether to strip him of the immunity from prosecution that is enjoyed by high officials here. The case stems from his decision in 2002 to ignore a court order to stop construction on a 500-foot hospital access road.

If the Congress votes against him, he would be open to criminal charges for defying the order, a process that could disqualify him from running for any office. Once he loses immunity, federal prosecutors could immediately take the case to a judge who could order Lopez Obrador jailed pending a final verdict and sentencing. Public officials in Mexico are not allowed bail in criminal cases.

President Vicente Fox and his National Action Party have come out in favor of disqualifying Lopez Obrador, saying Mexico’s rule of law is at stake.

“If everyone adjusted the law to his own interests, only disorder and chaos would await us,” Fox said Wednesday, an apparent reference to the Lopez Obrador case.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party and its leader, Roberto Madrazo, are said to be equivocal, fearing that a disqualification would make a martyr of the mayor and taint any PRI victory in 2006.

In their vote, legislators will have to weigh Lopez Obrador’s decision to thumb his nose at a federal judge with the severity of the rarely invoked penalty, a disqualification that would be interpreted as anti-democratic by many Mexicans.

Recent polls have showed that 70% of Mexicans oppose disqualifying Lopez Obrador from a presidential run.

“In the past, governors and mayors have ignored judicial orders and nothing has happened,” said Pamela Starr, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute in Mexico City. “I think it’s a coin toss how they’ll vote.”

The mayor has not officially announced his bid for his party’s nomination. That would violate Mexican law, which prohibits any government official from campaigning. But he has begun making trips to outlying states on weekends, and he recently wrote a book outlining his policy ideas, a perennial campaign tool. He is expected to resign the mayor’s post this fall, then throw his hat in the ring unless he is disqualified in the meantime.

Even experts who grant that he may win an injunction halting the disqualification say he may have to wait out the appeal in jail. Lopez Obrador has promised that he would lead a “peaceful citizens movement” from jail if necessary, to thwart disqualification.

“Let’s make the struggle. Let’s rescue Mexico,” he told followers at a rally here this week.

For years, Lopez Obrador has cultivated the image of a reformist waging a lonely struggle against corruption embedded in Mexican politics. That image was tarnished when his former private secretary, Rene Bejarano, was taped on video receiving cash from a contractor doing business with the city. In addition, an ex-city finance secretary, Gustavo Ponce, was taped gambling large sums in Las Vegas.

Lopez Obrador on Wednesday blamed political enemies including former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, of the PRI, for the release of the tapes and Fox for the move to disqualify him. The mayor has long claimed that he was cheated out of victory in the 1994 Tabasco state governor’s election won by the PRI’s Madrazo.

“The mentality of the people is changing but the political institutions are not,” Lopez Obrador said.

“There was a change in parties in the presidency four years ago,” an allusion to Fox’s victory in 2000 after decades of PRI rule, “but the same practices continue.”