Re: [Marxism] Mexican candidate faces jail because he challenged Fox-PRI oligarchies

[Horacio Oliveira <horaciooliveira@xxxxxxx>]

La Journada claims the "official" numbers was greater than 330,000...

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/abr05/050408/043n1cap.php

From my memory of protests and official events in the same area over
the years this protest looks like 400K and  to certainly be far
greater than the BBC or Reuters reports... I guess the BBC reporter
was not jogging with the protesters like they did in the Ukraine's so-
called "Orange Revolution".

Then again, no one is doing the daily protests to bring the city to a
halt....


On Apr 10, 2005, at 7:59 AM, Fred Feldman wrote:

> Reuters - Apr 8, 2005
>
> Mexico Presidential Hopeful Resigned to Jail
>
> By Alistair Bell
>
> MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's most popular politician plans to
> give himself up soon and go to jail, after Congress ruled he face
> trial for a minor crime that could turn campaigning for 2006
> presidential elections into chaos.
>
> Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a combative leftist
> who is the clear favorite to win the polls, may be knocked out of the
> race because of an accusation he ignored a court order in a land
> dispute.
>
> He promised on Friday to face justice as soon as the
> attorney-general's office asks a judge to issue an arrest warrant
> against him, which could happen within days.
>
> "The moment he receives that request, I am going to turn myself in at
> the jail," the mayor told reporters at his house.
>
> The case is likely to cause months of political turmoil in Mexico, a
> major oil exporter and big U.S. trade partner.
>
> Lopez Obrador, an austere former Indian rights activist, has called
> for peaceful "civil resistance" to overturn legal efforts by the two
> main parties in Congress to make sure he does not become a candidate.
>
> The mayor's leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution will likely
> organize mass street rallies, disrupt Congress and foment conflict
> between the federal government and local authorities it controls.
>
> The mayor has vowed to campaign for the presidency from behind bars,
> in what promises to be a drawn-out struggle.
>
> President Vicente Fox's National Action Party and the main opposition
> Institutional Revolutionary Party ganged up against the mayor in the
> lower house of Congress on Thursday to strip his immunity from
> prosecution.
>
> YEARS OF STABILITY
>
> While other Latin American countries like Argentina and Venezuela
> have suffered upheaval in recent years, Mexico has enjoyed years of
> stability since its mid-1990s financial meltdown, known as the
> "tequila crisis."
>
> That steadiness may now be at risk, Wall Street analysts fear.
> Mexican stocks are down sharply in recent weeks.
>
> Some 150,000 people protested in the capital on Thursday in favor of
> the mayor, who promises to lift millions of poor out of economic
> misery if he is elected president.
>
> Lopez Obrador is accused of disobeyeing a judge's order in 2001 to
> halt construction of a road through a disputed plot of expropriated
> land in the posh Santa Fe suburb.
>
> The road, meant as an access to a hospital, is a 150-meter (492-feet)
> stretch of unfinished work strewn with small boulders, cement bags
> and litter.
>
> There, workers described the charges as a political plot to keep the
> mayor from carrying out leftist policies from the president's office.
>
> "It's ridiculous. They are using it for a political game. Nobody ever
> comes here and people probably imagine something quite different. But
> if the public could see this," said topographer Miguel Angel Osornio
> at a nearby site.
>
> Although the mayor's aides expect a quick arrest order, a leading
> prosecutor said the judge could take weeks to decide whether he
> should be arrested.
>
> The left says the case is a political maneuver championed by
> conservative Fox to keep Lopez Obrador out of the presidency.
>
> Fox, the mayor's most bitter political foe, argues that the the issue
> is a purely legal one and said on Friday it showed Mexico was not
> afraid to prosecute popular figures.
>
> "I think today Mexico is giving the world an example of legality, of
> obeyeing the law, and a clear signal of the strength of its
> institutions," Fox told a news conference in Rome, where he was
> attending the pope's funeral.
>
> Lopez Obrador, hugely popular in Mexico City for carrying out public
> works and introducing food stamps for the elderly, heads nationwide
> opinion polls for 2006, often by as much as 10 points.
>
> Lopez Obrador faces a long, hard struggle if he hopes to win the top
> job and emulate other leftists like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio
> Lula da Silva and Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez who have taken
> power in recent years.
>
> He rejects comparisons to populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
>
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