Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the mayor of Mexico City and possible Presidential candidate in 2006 for the PRD, the leftist party in Mexican politics. He's a very popular politician and consistently leads the polls of the presidential candidates.
Lopez Obrador currently faces a possible loss of immunity from prosecution due to charges that his government ignored a court order. If indicted, electoral regulations disallow his eligibility to register as a presidential candidate.
He was desaforado (gotta love that word), that is, stripped of his immunity, on April 8th.
You've heard of magical realism in the works of authors such as Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez. But let me tell you, living within such a world is, well... hard work.
More below the fold.
López Obrador
From the Washington Post
If [the Mexican] Congress does that, as expected, the attorney general has said he would ask a judge for an arrest warrant for Lopez Obrador for ignoring a court order to halt construction of an access road to a hospital.
That could eliminate Lopez Obrador from the presidential race because Mexican law states that anyone under indictment for a crime cannot run for office. Lopez Obrador has said he expects to go to jail because of the case, which he describes as a politically motivated farce. He has said he would run for office from behind bars.
Let me put it like this: imagine it is 2007 and the likely Republican Presidential candidate is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, the most populous state (just as Mexico City is the most populous federal entity in Mexico), but the opposition is about to jail him because he stopped the construction of a road to a hospital!!
What would the Republicans do? How outraged would they be?
Alvaro Arceo, a lawyer and legal adviser to Lopez Obrador, said he was "99 percent sure" Congress would vote against the mayor because rival political parties, which control the legislative body, have already made a political pact to run him out of the presidential race."This is a blow to democracy," Arceo said. "This is a return to authoritarianism that we thought we had left behind."
The Mexican Congress has three major parties: the PRI (the center-right Dinosaur party that governed the country for more than 70 years), the PAN (the right party of Vicente Fox, currently the President) and the PRD (the progressive party of Lopez Obrador).
PRD Emblem
PRI and PAN effectively joined forces in the Congress to strip López Obrador of his immunity, despite the fact that they purportedly cannot stand each other.
Political unrest in Mexico may affect the US. Mexico exported in 2004 1.6 million barrels of oil per day to the US, compared to Saudi Arabia's 1.5 million barrels of oil per day; Mexico is America's second-largest trading partner and there's also the question of the 2000 miles long frontier that always causes headaches.
Lopez Obrador is the hope of the country's left. My father supports him avidly. He's gone to demonstrations in the Zócalo (Mexico City's giant central plaza), he told me once there were half a million people there. This affair has been brewing for a long time, and right now it's ready to boil. Other cases of Federal harassment from the Fox Government have surfaced since 2002.
In May [of 2002] microphones were found in the office of the Federal District Secretary of Finance. Federal District Head of Government Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador demanded that the Federal Government investigate. Wiretapping is a federal crime. It has already affected the market.
I'm afraid I'm not as sanguine as my father about López Obrador's candidacy to the Presidency. I remember a Socialist Latin American President, Salvador Allende , and how he suffered a coup d'état orchestrated from Washington DC and executed by the ruthless General Pinochet, who plunged the Chilean people into their darkest years.
[UPDATED by sersan] I read on today's printed edition of Excelsior (in Spanish) that the Mexican Senate may consider the dissolution of Mexico City's government. You see, there's a majority of PRD in the Federal District's Congress, and they have refused to indict López Obrador.
So what do you do when the body politic won't comply with your wishes? Dissolve it. I hope the Republicans aren't watching this or it may give them ideas.