Mexico’s Interior Minister Quits to Seek Presidency

Santiago Creel, a soft-spoken lawyer who has struggled as the point man in many of the Mexican government’s toughest political battles in recent years, resigned Wednesday as interior minister to run for president.

Creel, 50, read a brief statement pledging to fight poverty and bring more jobs and safer streets to a country governed since 2000 by his boss, President Vicente Fox, who is legally barred from running again.

Fox’s election ended a 71-year grip on the office by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and brought more competition to Mexican politics. Creel’s long-expected move foreshadows a preelection season in which each of the three major parties will subject its leading presidential hopeful to challenges by less prominent rivals.

In the ruling center-right National Action Party, the PAN, Creel is the front-runner. He has the apparent blessing of Fox, who Wednesday called him “a loyal and valuable companion in the consolidation of Mexican democracy.”

Creel faces a fall primary against former Energy Minister Felipe Calderon, former anti-corruption chief Francisco Barrio and Environment Minister Alberto Cardenas.

“He might be Fox’s favorite, but he will have to convince hundreds of thousands of party sympathizers that he can win the vote in the street,” Barrio told reporters.

Creel would probably run as an underdog in the July 2006 election. Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party led the latest voter-preference poll by the newspaper Reforma with 36%, compared with PRI leader Roberto Madrazo’s 25% and Creel’s 24%.

Lopez Obrador boosted his popularity last month by resisting an effort by Fox and the Congress to use a minor contempt-of-court charge to bar him from running for president. Madrazo has become the PRI’s strongest candidate by leading its comeback from defeat in 2000 to win state and congressional races.

Creel has suffered politically because of his role in Fox administration setbacks.

As interior minister, Creel oversaw domestic political and security affairs but was weakened as Congress cut his budget. Many, including lawmakers in his party, blame him for the administration’s failure to forge a consensus in the opposition-dominated Congress behind Fox’s proposals to modernize the criminal justice system, tax and labor codes and energy markets.

As Fox’s political point man in the legal case against Lopez Obrador, Creel was among those humiliated when massive street demonstrations organized by the mayor obliged the administration to back down.

Creel defended his record, saying he had “always stood for democratic dialogue, for transparency, for negotiation.”

He resigned a day after meeting in Washington with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, one of a series of encounters that U.S. officials say have helped improve security on the border with Mexico since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lately, however, Creel has sniped at the Bush administration, declaring last month that “no wall” could stop the flow of illegal workers from Mexico and urging the U.S. to legalize millions of those workers.