Mexico Swears In New Leader, Quickly

by JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., December 2, 2006

After attempts to block entrances, fisticuffs and much protest from losing leftists, the ceremony for Felipe Calderón lasted four minutes.

Mr. Calderón and members of his conservative National Action Party defeated attempts by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party to block the entries to the Congress. With his own partisans crowding the dais, the new president and his predecessor, Vicente Fox, were spirited in by bodyguards through a door near the front of the chamber at 9:50 a.m.

Mr. Calderón quickly took the oath of office, and Mr. Fox handed over the traditional presidential sash and left the chamber. The entire ceremony lasted four minutes.

All the while, opposition politicians blew whistles and held up banners suggesting Mr. Calderón was “a traitor to democracy.”

Earlier in the day, fisticuffs and pushing matches broke out between right-wing and left-wing lawmakers as they jockeyed for position in the chamber, with leftists trying to obstruct the entranceways and the conservatives ringing the dais and podium.

Never before in modern Mexican history has a president been sworn under such chaotic and divisive conditions.

The courts determined Mr. Calderón, 44 years old, won the election last July 2 by about 240,000 votes out of 41 million ballots cast. But his principal rival, Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, has insisted that the official results are tainted and has never conceded defeat.

At noon today, Mr. Calderón gave a speech to several thousand invited guests at the National Auditorium, as hundreds of police in riot gear ringed the building and blocked roads for miles around with tall metal fences.

While on the street Mr. Lopez Obrador’s supporters chanted slogans and waved banners, inside the auditorium the atmosphere was more like the Academy Awards than a political rally, with smooth voiced announcers praising Mr. Calderón and a big-screen television showing a rosy biography of him.

As he has many times in the last two months, Mr. Calderón reached out to his leftist adversaries and called on them to put the national interest above partisan differences.

“To those who voted for other political options, I will not ignore the reasons and causes for your votes,” he said. “And I ask you to let me gain your confidence with acts.”

“It’s clear that in Mexico is living through tense times between the main political forces, but conscious of the seriousness of the disagreements, I assume completely the responsibility to resolve them and reunify Mexico,” he said.

He went on to announce he would immediately push forward two proposals near and dear to Mr. Lopez Obrador. He promised to cut the salaries of the president and high government officials (a staple in his adversary’s stump speech), as well as to provide universal health care to children.

Twelve hours earlier, as Mr. Fox’s term ran out at midnight, the government took the unprecedented step of broadcasting the private swearing in of Mr. Calderón at the presidential residence, a legal necessity usually not publicized. Minutes later, Mr. Calderón spoke on national television to urge lawmakers to “respect the constitution” and let the ceremony later in the day take place.

His call went unheeded. Just before the public swearing-in this morning, Mr. Lopéz Obrador held a mass rally in the city’s historic central square, the Constitutional Plaza, attracting more than 100,000 supporters. Then he led a march down Paseo de la Reforma toward the National Auditorium, where President Calderón was to speak.

Speaking to his supporters, Mr. Lopéz Obrador charged once again that the election was fraudulent and that Mr. Calderón’s victory was engineered by a “neofascist oligarchy.” He claimed the “imposition” of Mr. Calderón as president amounted to a “coup d’etat.”

“We are not rebels without a cause,” he said. “Sometimes they forget the heart of the matter, which is that they robbed us of the election.”

He also hinted darkly that he and his party might resort to violent protests in their efforts to “defend democracy.”

“We don’t want to generate problems, but they have to understand for once and for all, we are going to defend the democracy of this country,” Mr. Lopéz Obrador said. “We have always acted in a responsible manner, but understand me well: Everything has its limit.”

In the Congress, after the donnybrooks and yelling matches of the morning, the left and right seemed entrenched, boding ill for any agreement on important legislation to keep the country economically competitive.

In the end, the conservative legislative leaders were successful not only in getting Mr. Calderon safely to the podium, but also in ensuring that dignitaries like former President George H.W. Bush, leading the United States delegation, were able to attend the ceremony.

The raucous behavior of the leftist lawmakers provoked strong reactions. “The Democratic Revolution Party should lose its party registration, because they don’t respect institutions,” said Héctor Larios, the Nation Action Party leader in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress. “We have put a stop to the continual threats and extortions of the P.R.D.,” he added, using the leftist party’s Spanish initials. “We cannot respect people who don’t respect institutions.”

But the P.R.D. leadership, for their part, continued to lob verbal grenades at the new president, suggesting that his refusal to accept a recount in the general election had pushed the country to the brink of a revolution.

“Felipe Calderón does not enjoy legitimacy in his position, even when he has the law on his side,” said Senator Carlos Navarette. “Calderon’s government has started its rule by throwing matches everywhere, on dry straw.”