Then you should wish Manuel Lopez Obrador the best. Not the Minutemen. Because he could make Mexico more liveable, by making it more liberal.
The popular leftist mayor of Mexico City leads by around ten points in 2006 presidential race polling. But the big Mexican Parties and conservative Vincente Fox have ganged up on him, changing the law to prevent his run.
By Alistair Bell
MEXICO CITY (
Reuters) - The popular leftist mayor of Mexico City awaited an order for his arrest on Friday after Congress ruled he could be tried for a minor crime in a move that could prevent him from running for president and throw the country's 2006 elections into chaos.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who polls show is by far Mexico's most popular politician, has called for peaceful "civil resistance" to overturn legal efforts by the two main parties in Congress to knock him out of the presidential race.
The case is likely to cause months of political turmoil as the mayor campaigns for the presidency from behind bars.
The mayor, an austere former Indian rights activist, did not turn up on Friday for a dawn news conference he gives every day, and aides said he expected a judge to issue an arrest order against him any time.
"He is going to be at home waiting the decision of the authorities," Alejandro Encinas, a close aide, told the Televisa television network.
Lopez Obrador is accused of disobeying a judge's order in 2001 to halt work on a road to a hospital through a disputed plot of expropriated land on the outskirts of the city.
The left says the case is a political maneuver championed by conservative President Vicente Fox to keep Lopez Obrador out of the presidency.
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 "tequila crisis" financial meltdown.
That recovery may now be at risk, Wall Street analysts fear.
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.
He has vowed that the legal action will not deter him.
"I am used to fighting. I am not one of those who passively accepts unjust condemnation," Lopez Obrador told Congress in a speech before Thursday's vote.
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.
A judge is now expected to issue an order for his arrest. Lopez Obrador says he will give himself up rather than be forcibly detained.
Although the mayor's aides expect an quick arrest order, a leading prosecutor said the judge could take weeks to decide whether he should be arrested.
"Perhaps at the end of the month we will know if the judge believes there are enough judicial elements to issue an arrest order," prosecutor Carlos Javier Vega told Mexican television.
"I firmly believe in Lopez Obrador. He has done many good things while other governments robbed money," said metro worker Soledad Jimenez, 45. "I believe he still has a chance to be president."
Yet 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.
About 150,000 protesters poured into the streets of central Mexico City earlier on Thursday to back Lopez Obrador, who promises to lift millions of poor out of economic misery if he is elected.
The protest was peaceful and Mexico's stock market, which had dropped sharply over the past month, gained 2.5 percent on Thursday, its biggest increase this year. Share prices were flat on Friday morning.
His rise worries Mexican business leaders and some in Washington, who fear he may turn out to be a populist like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
