Protest over Mexico oil bill ends

President Felipe Calderon’s proposal to overhaul Mexico’s oil industry has revealed a rift in the rival Democratic Revolution Party, with leaders arguing over how to respond to the initiative.

On Friday, after days of talks between party moderates and self-described “radicals,” the PRD ended a two-week blockade of Congress that had prevented discussion of Calderon’s proposed changes.

Legislators from the PRD and two smaller leftist parties had shut down both houses on April 10 by taking over the daises in both. The PRD’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called it an act of civil disobedience to defend the state-owned oil giant Pemex from what he says is a bid to privatize it.

But some PRD leaders had opposed the blockade. And by Friday, leaders from across the political spectrum had made it clear that they wanted an end to the standoff.

Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, broke his silence on the protest this week, calling it a “ridiculous” farce.

In private, many PRD moderates appeared to agree. In a heated closed meeting Wednesday, the PRD’s leader in the Senate, Sen. Carlos Navarrete, pressed Lopez Obrador to lift the protest, according to the newspaper El Universal.

“The Senate has become a madhouse,” Navarrete was said to have told Lopez Obrador. “We can’t transform the country like this. I believe in the parliamentary way.”

Calderon has cast the struggle over the energy bill as a defining battle of his presidency. Pemex’s oil reserves are quickly depleting. The government has suggested that foreign expertise and capital are needed to help explore for new fields in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The bill would give Pemex more freedom to enter into foreign contracts.

But the left sees Mexico’s sovereignty at stake. Oil fields were nationalized in 1938, and public ownership of petroleum reserves is enshrined in the constitution.

PRD moderates had hammered out an agreement Tuesday with the PAN for a 71-day debate on the bill.

But Lopez Obrador, who lost the 2006 presidential election to Calderon, wanted to further “radicalize” the protests.

“What we’ve won so far has been thanks to taking the dais and because of our movement, not because of negotiation,” he told Navarrete on Wednesday, according to El Universal.

The PRD has about a third of the seats in both houses and the takeover was akin to a filibuster in the U.S. Congress.

On Friday, Navarrete persuaded enough legislators to back an end to the takeover.

“We won,” he said. “We stopped the quick approval of these proposals . . . which are clearly in violation of the constitution.”

The debate on the oil bill is set to begin May 13.

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hector.tobar@latimes.com