Protests may threaten the stability of Mexico

by Monica Campbell
Mexico City
Transfer of power turns into rocky spectacle; leftist candidate refuses to concede election

Six years after President Vicente Fox's election ended seven decades of one-party rule, what should have been the first orderly transfer of power instead is challenging Mexico's democratic institutions and raising the threat of political destabilization.

The continuing street protests over the outcome of the July 2 presidential election and the continuing refusal of leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to concede have become spectacle instead of succession.

But try telling that to Eva Alanis.

The 52-year-old, who lives in the rundown outskirts of this sprawling capital, is adamant that Lopez Obrador is the next president of Mexico. She resolutely rejects Felipe Calderon, the candidate from Fox's center-right National Action Party, or PAN, who won by less than a single percentage point.

"Some say he lost the election, but I say he was robbed of victory," said Alanis, getting wet on a recent rainy evening as she and a few thousand other voters listened to Lopez Obrador speak from a stage in this capital city's main plaza, the Zocalo. "He is my president, Mexico's real president, and I'll stand by him every step of the way."

Although Calderon's victory has yet to be certified, a seven-judge electoral court has tossed claims of electoral fraud made by Lopez Obrador and his left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.

The electoral court has until Wednesday either to call for a fresh election or to declare a president-elect. Its previous thumbs-down ruling on Lopez Obrador's demand for a national recount of the more than 41 million votes cast strongly suggests that Calderon will be named Mexico's next president.

Unable to win the election outright, Lopez Obrador is counting on die-hard loyalists like Alanis to stick with him as he builds a shadow people's government, aiming to become Senor Presidente by whatever means. He has called for a convention of his supporters on Sept. 16, which he hopes will see hundreds of thousands of devotees -- from corn farmers and artists to PRD members and civic leaders -- converge on the Zocalo. Lopez Obrador said that the gathering is intended to determine the "new stage" of his grassroots movement.

Clearly, Lopez Obrador hopes to ride a tide of frustration in Mexico that the close election exposed. The pro-market, Harvard-educated Calderon won his slight majority largely from the votes of the country's growing middle class and residents of wealthier, more industrialized northern states who have benefited most from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Lopez Obrador, from the rural southern state of Tabasco, appealed to the millions of Mexicans who feel abandoned by the political system. He wooed their votes with a populist platform that championed social programs for the poor, subsidies for farmers squeezed by NAFTA, and the idea of keeping Mexico's state-run energy and electricity sector away from foreign hands.

The PRD candidate and his supporters deny that their opposition movement threatens violence or anyone in particular. But worries are growing that the Sept. 16 rally could lead to confrontation -- it comes one day after Mexico's Independence Day, when Fox and the military are due to preside over traditional celebrations in the Zocalo.

"This movement will not be about violence and setting up blockades," said Rafael Rodriguez, national coordinator of Mexico's National Farmer Trade Association, which represents 60,000 small-scale farmers. "Our struggle will be concentrated on specific reforms and ideas, with a dominant part of the agenda set on how to rescue the countryside."

Rodriguez refers to Lopez Obrador's promise to rework the NAFTA treaty to protect corn and bean crops, the mainstay of these struggling farmers. Under the U.S.-Mexican-Canadian pact, import tariffs will be lifted in 2008, leaving numerous farmers here unable to compete with subsidized U.S. growers.

"This will be a peaceful resistance movement, more Martin Luther King Jr. than Che Guevara," said Jose Agustin Ortiz, a former PRD federal congressman and one of the project's national coordinators. "We're more center-left. I don't see us attracting radical leftist groups."

Yet where this all is leading remains ill-defined. Underlying Lopez Obrador's political project are vague references to civil disobedience. "Resistance to the electoral fraud will continue," said Ortiz. "There will be a political cost to all of this. We still haven't defined what the resistance will look like, but we will soon."

Here, say critics, lies Lopez Obrador's real aim: to destabilize the Calderon government. "Sadly, I think this is his real goal," said political analyst Jorge Zepeda, who wrote a book on the presidential candidates. "This is becoming a tragicomedy, with Lopez Obrador set on becoming the government's foe."

Still unclear is how fervently the PRD will support Lopez Obrador, and for how long.

On Friday evening, PRD legislators took over the podium in the legislative palace minutes before Fox was scheduled to deliver his annual state-of-the-nation speech. "Vote by vote, booth by booth!" they cried, backing Lopez Obrador's call for a full recount.

When Fox arrived to Congress, he chose to avoid direct confrontation. Instead, the outgoing president hand delivered a written copy of his final speech, marking the first time a Mexican leader did not give the annual speech live before Congress. Later that evening, Fox read his speech in a nationally televised address from Los Pinos, Mexico's White House.

Earlier in the week, Carlos Navarette, head of the PRD faction in the Senate, said his party would "never forget that the leader and director of the Mexican people's action and the left is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador." While the blockade in Congress was seen as a strong show of support for Lopez Obrador, it also foreshadowed the opposition Calderon could face once he takes office in December.

Yet on the other side of the equation, political experts point out, the PRD for the first time will be the second-largest party in Congress, next to Calderon's PAN and ahead of the former ruling PRI.

"I think you'll see more and more PRD legislators willing to negotiate with the next president," said Zepeda. "It'll be the PRD's first chance at influencing reforms. Not everyone in the party will be willing to hand the party's power over to somebody who invokes radical actions and street rule."

Meanwhile, Calderon may benefit strongly from Lopez Obrador's post-electoral fight, which sapped much of the leftist politician's capital and earned him foes on many sides. For more than a month, thousands of Lopez Obrador backers have protested the election results by constructing protest camps that have filled the Zocalo and blocked the city's biggest avenue. The camp-in has meant big losses for the capital's hotels, restaurants, shops and tourism industry.

A recent poll by Reforma, a leading newspaper, found 70 percent of the respondents against the blockades.

Even Carlos Monsivais, one of Mexico's most recognized leftist writers, has backed away from Lopez Obrador. He called the encampments "an act of profound callousness that hurts a cause that belongs to many people."

The Roman Catholic Church, a powerful force in Mexican life, also expressed displeasure. Cardinal Norberto Rivera, Mexico's most influential religious leader, has chastised pro-Lopez Obrador protesters for interrupting Mass at the capital's main cathedral last Sunday and using the sacred image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on placards. The church has called for prayer and for "peace and reconciliation."

Meanwhile, average Mexicans are growing weary of the dispute.

"Calderon won the election, and Lopez Obrador must accept it, not fight it," said Saul Medellin, a 21-year-old who sells ice cream not far from downtown Mexico City. "What Lopez Obrador is doing now will only hurt our economy and scare people off. I'm not seeing the good in this."