Mexico & Nafta - 12 October 2004

The long awaited summit meeting between President Vicente Fox and the mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, failed to achieve anything. Indeed, less than a week after the meeting on 29 September, supporters of López Obrador and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática were making a nuisance of themselves in congress. The protesters who interrupted congressional business claimed that the federal government is now prodding congress into cutting the budget for Mexico City in order to undermine support for López Obrador.

President Vicente Fox made his antipathy to the mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, all too apparent only a day after what was supposed to be their clear-the-air meeting on 29 September. Fox said that repeating a lie does not make it the truth. As one gleeful senior politician from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the biggest party in the country and congress, put it, all the long-awaited meeting produced was a photograph.

President Fox's phrase about repeating lies not changing anything came in response to another claim by López Obrador that Fox had interfered in the legal action that was being taken against him. Fox adamantly denies this, though his attorney general and interior minister admit meeting the president of the supreme court to discuss the legal action against López Obrador.

López Obrador all but called Fox a liar at his regular (6am) press conference on 30 September when he gave his considered view of the 29 September meeting with the president. López Obrador said that he could not rely on President Fox's promise to act honestly and impartially over the issue of why the government was seeking to strip him of his immunity from prosecution in order to try him for presumed contempt of court. López Obrador said Fox had his views that the mayor respected but that they did not tally with his own opinion on the issue.

López Obrador is being prosecuted for flouting an injunction that would have prevented the compulsory purchase and subsequent use of a property, El Encino, to improve public access to a hospital. López Obrador believes that the court action was the final element of a year-long plot by the federal government to undermine him. He is, according to the opinion polls, the favourite to succeed Fox as president in 2006. If he loses his immunity and then is found guilty of contempt, he will be unable to stand for the presidency.

The Mexico City mayor brought up this issue of the prosecution during his meeting with the president. Fox's denial of government involvement in the prosecution, for political ends, verged on the slippery. López Obrador said to Fox that it seemed to him that there had been a campaign for the past year to knock him out of the presidential election for 2006. According to López Obrador, Fox replied by saying that was not the intention of the government. Fox's awkward, indirect phrasing was odd, even for Mexicans who delight in periphrasis.

It is clear that the mayor is deliberately stoking up the row between himself and the president. His complaint about Fox's interference in the attempt to strip him of his immunity was made in a long letter, dated 28 September, written before he went to see Fox, but published afterwards. The letter is mostly a protest about a congressional committee's decision in the penultimate week of September not to accept his application to call President Fox and some of his ministers to testify to congress. This committee also rejected 22 of the 71 pieces of evidence produced by the mayor of Mexico City in his defence. López Obrador had wanted to call and question Fox, two of his ministers and the president's former private secretary to testify on the issue.

A congressional committee is currently considering whether López Obrador should lose his immunity from prosecution. López Obrador argues that the case against him has been concocted by the government and this is why he wanted to question the president.

The saga is likely to continue, not least because the PRI, which can only profit from the row, is also determined to keep the issue bubbling in congress. López Obrador's latest move was to send another letter to the congressional committee, arguing that its failure to accept his right to call the president to testify broke the constitution because the case was clearly political.

Supreme court
López Obrador and the PRD has been trying to make political capital from the fact that President Fox and his ministers discussed the issue of López Obrador's immunity with the president of supreme court. The meetings with the supreme court began as long ago as 6 April this year, well before the decision to prosecute López Obrador and remove his immunity was taken. The government's line is that it realised that the case was political dynamite and it wanted to see if there was any way in which the court action could be avoided. The meetings concluded that there was no way of dodging the court action.

The bumbling president of the PRD, Leonel Godoy, said on 19 September that if the president of the supreme court had discussed the issue of the legal immunity of the mayor of Mexico City with President Vicente Fox, he should resign. Godoy was reacting to confirmation by the Procurador General de la República, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, on 15 September that the issue of whether López Obrador, should lose his immunity from prosecution had been discussed by both politicians and legal officials at a meeting with the president. 

Godoy called for the president of the supreme court, Mariano Azuela, to say what issues he had discussed with President Fox. Separately, Ramundo Cárdenas, a PRD leader in the senate, said that he would push for a public explanation from the supreme court justice about what is going on. He said that all Mexicans knew that a lot of verdicts could be bought and soldthat it was clear that Azuela had acted politically. 

López Obrador rather embarrassed his colleagues when he admitted, on 3 October, that he too had met Azuela. He claimed that these meetings had taken place last year, long before the start of the attempt to prosecute him for contempt. López Obrador said that the last time he met Azuela was in March this year. Some of López Obrador's team, notably Mexico City's attorney general, Bernardo Batiz, have implied that López Obrador's meetings with supreme court justices to exchange views were pretty regular. López Obrador has denied that he even discussed particular cases with Azuela. Azuela, however, is reported to have warned López Obrador last year that he risked a contempt action over El Encino. 

Academic lawyers were horrified by the government's meetings with Azuela. They said that it was very serious that the division between the executive and the judiciary was being blurred. Raúl Carrancá y Rivas, a legal expert, said that the meetings between Fox, his ministers and the legal officials were a mistake.

• Mexico City assembly members from PRD brought the federal congress to a halt on 5 October and threatened to do it again on 7 October. The PRD politicians are drawing attention to the long-running spat between the federal government and the mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The perredistas occupied congress for 18 hours, much to the annoyance of the other parties in the chamber. The PRD wants congress to throw out the government's attempt to strip López Obrador of his immunity from prosecution. 

The PRD also wants to stop the federal congress from chopping the education budget for Mexico City. The PRD is calling for a massive rally on 7 October to intimidate congressmen into dropping this proposal. Congress is also musing over cutting M$9bn (US$782m) from the city's budget. The PRD argues that the federal congress's determination to clip the budget for the capital is another side of the government's plan to undermine López Obrador. 

• President Vicente Fox held the first of his meetings with political leaders on 22 September. The initial meeting was with the leader of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Roberto Madrazo. The meeting was apparently cordial and focused on economic issues. The two men talked about how they might work together. Crucially, Madrazo was accompanied by the PRI's president of the lower chamber, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, and the party's two leaders in the two houses of congress: Emilio Chuayffet in the lower house and Enrique Jackson in the senate. Some of the good done by this meeting may have been squandered by an inept statement from the minister of energy in congress on 22 September. 

The minister, Fernando Elizondo, said that there was corruption in congress. Beltrones warned Elizondo either to produce clear evidence so that an investigation could be launched, or to shut up and stop making unsubstantiated accusations. Elizondo lost his temper when he came under hostile questioning over the controversial multiple service contracts, which allow foreign companies to help to develop the country's (nationalised) gas fields. A populist deputy, Jesús González Schmal, from Convergencia, said that congress was asking the courts to declare the contracts null and void because they damaged the national interest.