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Mexico pres makes stand against popular leftist mayor Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8218933http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8218933
Mexico's Fox Won't Pardon Leftist Mayor
Tue Apr 19, 2005 12:04 AM ET
By Pav Jordan
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government ruled out on Monday a pardon for the country's most popular politician if he is found guilty in a land dispute case, which would prevent his running for president next year.
Days after a presidential spokesman floated the idea of a pardon for Mexico City's left-wing mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the government quashed it on Monday.
President Vicente Fox's top spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Mexican law does not allow pardons for public officials who break the law while in office. "A pardon was never contemplated," he said.
Interior Minister Santiago Creel opened the door hours later to a "political solution," as the Fox administration seemed to wobble in its response to the crisis over Lopez Obrador, which has polarized Mexican politics and prompted street protests.
"Once (the courts) rule we'll see if there is room for a political solution," Creel, another possible presidential contender, told reporters. "We'll wait for the rulings and see if there is margin for finding a solution that doesn't disturb the rule of law."
Attorney General Rafael Macedo later questioned Creel's pronouncement in a televised interview, saying the conflict was "strictly legal" and thus not subject to a political solution.
Lopez Obrador's administration is accused of defying a 2001 court order by constructing an access road to a Mexico City hospital across expropriated land.
Congress stripped Lopez Obrador of his legal immunity on April 7, forcing him to face trial and possibly knocking him out of the presidential election, for which he is the clear front-runner in opinion polls.
Lopez Obrador accuses Fox, his conservative ruling party and the main opposition party of ganging up to elbow him out of the presidential race.
"I call on Vicente Fox to rectify and to abandon his stance for the good of Mexico," Lopez Obrador said on Monday.
AWAITING ARREST ORDER
Fox says no politician, no matter how popular, should be allowed to flout the law. However, he insists his government does not want to block the mayor's presidential bid.
"The presidency repeats, once again, that it has no intention of being an obstacle for Mr. Lopez Obrador," Aguilar told reporters.
Lopez Obrador, who says he committed no crime, has spent the last 10 days in his city apartment waiting to be charged and jailed, but the arrest warrant has not been issued.
He accuses the government of trying to drag out the legal process so he is unable to register as a candidate even if he is acquitted.
"What gets us is they say they're still reviewing his file," said Andres Lozano, a Mexico City legislator for Lopez Obrador's leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. "How can that be possible? It doesn't make sense."
Lopez Obrador plans to return to work at city hall next week, although the government says Congress' vote to strip his legal immunity automatically removed him as mayor.
If he is jailed, the PRD will likely organize mass street rallies in his defense and fan conflicts between the capital city authorities it controls and the federal government.
Scuffles broke out between dozens of PRD supporters and presidential security agents when protesters tried to march on Fox's ranch in central Guanajuato state over the weekend.
Fox's historic election victory in 2000 ended 71 years of authoritarian rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
His party is within striking distance of Lopez Obrador in polls but Fox has been criticized for risking his democratic legacy with the case against the mayor. (Additional reporting by Brian Winter)
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