MEXICO: The Left’s Rising Star Complains of Smear Campaign

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mar 8 2004 (IPS) - Mexico City Mayor Andrés López Obrador accused the government Monday of mounting a smear campaign against him with support from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to torpedo his chances of becoming president in 2006.

The excellent public image enjoyed by López Obrador, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), has been badly tainted by the recent corruption scandals in which two of his former aides are implicated.

López Obrador called on his supporters to gather next Sunday in the ”Zócalo”, the central Mexico City plaza, where he said he would describe the ”strategy designed” by the conservative government of President Vicente Fox to destroy his reputation.

The mayor said he had known nothing about the mismanagement of funds and graft of which his former campaign chief and private secretary René Bejarano, and former Mexico City finance chief Gustavo Ponce were accused in the past two weeks after the airing of videos shot by hidden cameras.

”At least 60,000 people are going to get together in the zócalo. We’re going to show them the strength of ‘el Peje’ (López Obrador’s nickname),” Beatriz Baños, one of the leaders of the Assembly of Neighbourhoods, a PRD-affiliated grassroots group that works in favour of housing for the poor in the capital, told IPS.

”This whole thing is a campaign that the powerful elites are mounting against ‘el Peje’,” said Baños.

Pollsters, who until two weeks ago were releasing opinion poll results showing that López Obrador is Mexico’s most popular and respected politician, have carried out new surveys reflecting a marked decline in his image.

”How honest is López Obrador?” the newspaper Reforma asked 500 people in 32 cities and towns across Mexico on Mar. 4. Nearly 45 percent said he was corrupt, compared to a poll conducted before the scandals broke, when less than 22 percent described him as corrupt.

The mayor says one of the videos was shot with the help of the DEA, although he did not provide evidence. He claims the U.S. anti-drug agency is involved in the smear operation against him.

Since López Obrador took office in 2001, his popularity has climbed steadily, to the point that many had come to predict that no one would have a chance against him in the 2006 elections.

The mayor’s governing style and image, which set him apart from traditional Mexican political leaders and officials, have drawn the attention of local as well as foreign observers.

He works from six in the morning to late at night, lives in a typically lower-middle-class apartment, drives an economy car, and is not surrounded by bodyguards.

Last month, posters of the mayor began to appear in the streets of the capital, reading ”Wanted: future president, for his honesty and his love for the fatherland; because he knows how to govern; and because we need him.”

In the midst of the jostling and commotion that has already begun within each party with a view to the presidential elections, political analysts have cautioned that anything can happen between now and 2006.

In the case of the mayor, who has been hit hard by the scandal, the dire warnings already ring true.

At the same time, the broadcasting of the videos has tipped the PRD – which was founded in 1989 – into its worst crisis ever, as the leaders of the party themselves acknowledge.

In one of the tapes, Bejarano, an influential politician who considered himself a friend of López Obrador and was – until two weeks ago – the head of the PRD lawmakers in the city legislature, was seen receiving a suitcase full of dollars from magnate Carlos Ahumada, the owner of a construction company, two football teams and the El Independiente newspaper.

Ahumada, a naturalised Mexican citizen originally from Argentina, claimed that he had been blackmailed by Mexico City authorities.

But his companies have periodically won contracts for public infrastructure works in the capital, which has been governed by the PRD since 1997, when the city mayor was directly elected for the first time ever.

Prior to 1997, the city was administered by a regent appointed by the president.

The video showing Bejarano – who has held several posts in López Obrador’s city government – holding a suitcase bursting with dollars was broadcast a few days after the airing of a tape in which Ponce, Mexico City’s then-head of finance, can be seen betting huge sums of money at a Las Vegas casino.

Ponce, who vanished from the public eye after he was sacked by López Obrador, was a friend of Ahumada’s, and since mid-2003 only worked Wednesdays and Thursdays in the city hall, spending the rest of his time gambling in Las Vegas.

Speaking from an undisclosed location, Ponce said the mayor had directly instructed him to make illegal money transfers from city government accounts to carry out public works.

But López Obrador insists that all of the allegations are part of a campaign ”by the government and the ‘right’, aimed at discrediting me.”

His public defence will focus on showing that all of the blows against him were designed by the government, Fox’s conservative National Action Party (PAN), and former president Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed the country from 1929 to 2000.

For his ”dignity and honour,” López Obrador said he will ”bet everything” to demonstrate that he is guilty of no wrongdoing.

Mexico City prosecutor Bernardo Batiz reported that the police are looking for Ahumada and Ponce, and that Bejarano has been summoned to testify.

Political scientist Jesús Silva-Herzog said the crisis in the city government ”has served to once again show López Obrador’s incapacity to admit his errors, to admit that he opened the door to corruption and brought a group of swindlers into city hall.

”As always, the mayor is pursued by the wolves of evil, he is not responsible for anything, he sees himself as a saint, and those who criticise him are only the dark forces in the woods,” he said in an interview with IPS.

Since he became mayor and his popularity began to grow, as demonstrated by the polls, López Obrador has stated several times that he is politically indestructible due to his honesty and the integrity that marks his administration.