Andrés Manuel López Obrador
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Andrés Manuel López Obrador (b. 13 November 1953) is a Mexican politician. He was the Head of Government (Jefe de Gobierno) of the Federal District (commonly called the "mayor of Mexico City" in the English-language press) from 2000 to 2005. He was stripped of immunity from prosecution in April 2005 by the Chamber of Deputies in order for him to face criminal charges that he allowed the building of an entrance road to a city hospital to continue, in defiance of a court order. After hundreds of thousands of people marched through Mexico City in his support, the Attorney General's office (called Procuraduría General de la República) dropped the case because the punishment for such an offence was unclear (see the desafuero section of this article). His arrest would have seriously compromised his presidential aspirations for 2006, for which he quit his post on July 29 2005. López Obrador was previously the president of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in his home state of Tabasco and the president of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) at the state and national levels.
In the media, López Obrador is frequently referred to by his initials AMLO and as el Peje an abbreviation of pejelagarto, a species of fish from the Lepisosteidae family, found in Tabasco.
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Background
Born in the small town of Tepetitán, Macuspana municipality, in Tabasco, Andrés Manuel López Obrador became interested in politics at an early age. He studied political science and public administration at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before joining the PRI and collaborating actively in Carlos Pellicer's campaign for the governorship of Tabasco.
In 1977, he was selected to head the Instituto Indigenista (Indigenous People's Institute) of his state, where he promoted the publication of Native American literature. In 1984 he relocated to Mexico City to work at the Instituto Nacional del Consumidor (National Consumers' Institute), a government agency.
Although he worked for a time for Tabasco governor Enrique González Pedrero, López Obrador resigned over political differences to join the new dissenting wing of the PRI led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, which would later be transformed into an independent party, the PRD. He ran for office in Tabasco in 1988 under this new banner.
After losing that election, López Obrador served as PRD president in Tabasco until 1994, when, after losing a bid for the Tabasco governorship (to the PRI, in a highly disputed election) he launched a run for the head office of his party. He led the PRD from the 2 August 1996 until 10 April 1999.
Jefe de Gobierno of Mexico City
On 29 March 2000, he entered the Federal District's Head of Government (Jefe de Gobierno) race. Jefe de Gobierno, a position with a status between that of city mayor and state governor, is arguably the second most important elected office in Mexico. His candidacy was contested by political opponents who claimed he was not really a resident of the capital city, but the allegations were dismissed on a legal technicality, and López Obrador proved popular amongst the working classes of the city, many of whom are themselves migrants from other parts of Mexico. This, combined with support from social democrats in the middle classes, vitalized by what they saw as the first real left-of-center candidate in Mexican politics for a long time, assured his solid victory in the elections of 2 July 2000, with 38.3% of the popular vote. Running as the "common candidate" of the Alliance for Mexico City, he defeated Santiago Creel of the PAN (33.4%), Jesús Silva Herzog Flores of the PRI (22.8%), and a couple of other minor-party candidates. [1]
Public image
During his time as Head of Government, López Obrador has become one of the most recognizable and popular politicians in Mexico. Like most left-populist politicians in Latin America, López Obrador appeals to the large lower and lower middle classes, which make up the overwhelming majority of the population, but have considerably less influence in traditional politics and the media.
He has constructed a public image of frugality and moderation. While Mexican politicians aren't noted for their frugality, López Obrador has stated on several times it is his frugality and moderation which set him apart, and on a few occasions explicitly declared he never bought a suit but had them made by a tailor in downtown Mexico City using cloth from the nearby stores, and only one or two a year as his salary didn't allowed for more. His salary as Head of Government was around USD $7,000 a month.
He is very popular among citizens of Mexico City, and was voted the second-best mayor in the world by Mexicans at the ATA online poll on www.citymayors.com. Therefore, he is widely seen as the PRD's obvious candidate for the 2006 presidential election, and until 2005 he denied having made up his mind regarding a presidential bid. As it became clear there was the possibility of a legal impediment to run for office (see Desafuero section) he publicly declared he would only support a different candidate for his party if he had a real chance of winning the election and not only a 15% of the votes (this percentage roughly that obtained by runner-up PRD precandidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in his previous runs for presidency). Should he run, he is considered one of the favourites, partly because both the two other main Mexican parties have had problems coming up with a viable and popular presidential candidate so far. However, his triumph isn't assured – his personal popularity is great in some parts of the country but his party, the PRD, is notably weak outside a handful of states.
Some of López Obrador's supporters for the presidency consider him to be Mexico's equivalent to the other new left-populist presidents in Latin America, such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Néstor Kirchner (Argentina), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay), and Hugo Chávez (Venezuela); his detractors, however, prefer to compare him with the latter one. The comparison with Chávez is based on the perceived disregard of both for law and institutions coupled with an insistence on the authority of the "People" over established institutions (usually when referring to the desafuero process).
Political agenda
His leadership of the city government has been one focused on social issues. Under the slogan First, the poor, he has instituted various social programs to help those living in abject poverty, including various subsidies for senior citizens. He is, in general, against raising taxes and the cost of city services, obtaining funds from debt and austerity plans in spending.
He has also reformed the city's police force, leading to a reduction in corruption. He has succeeded in lowering some crime rates (like car theft) but also saw his law enforcement record stained by the lynching of federal law enforcement officers doing an undercover investigation on 2004. They were observed taking photographs and were seized for several hours after identifying themselves as federal agents; two of them were finally beaten to death and burnt, the other one barely survived and was rescued. Both federal and local authorities refused to send any kind of reinforcements despite the several hours the incident lasted and the officers' pleas for help in live television; AMLO's posture was that he would never send the police against the crowd for any motive, even if they were holding law enforcement agents, as that would inevitably provoke a massacre. For this incident President Fox fired the city's chief of police Marcelo Ebrard (a constitutional power), after AMLO clearly stated he would keep Ebrard in his post. After some days AMLO appointed Ebrard as Secretary of Social Development, a post only he can revoke. This new post caused speculations on whether López supports Ebrard as his succesor when he runs for Presidenty
One highly visible project has been the restoration and modernization of Mexico City's old city center, the Centro Histórico, which has 16th-17th century buildings and a large number of tourist attractions, yet has been badly maintained, overcrowded, and crime-ridden in the last few decades. The Mexico City government entered into a joint venture with Carlos Slim, Latin America's richest man, and a native of the Centro Histórico, to restore and rebuild large parts of the area, creating attractive new shopping and residential areas for the middle to upper classes.
In an effort to improve the city's traffic conditions, a widely cited problem exacerbated by the common blocking of streets and avenues by political activists left undisturbed by police, his government embarked in 2003 on a number of large construction projects, aiming to increase the capacity and speed of the city's main throughfares, by constructing rapid-transit upper levels and extensions. Despite being controversial while in construction, the projects have led to a noticeable improvement in travel times in some parts of the city, and more projects along the same lines are underway, or in planning. An express bus service, the Metrobús, based on the successful Colombian model, is being built down Avenida Insurgentes, cutting through the city some 20 km from north to south; improvements to the aging metro system are not expected, however.
Stance on demonstrations
In July 2004, after several months of kidnappings throughout Mexico, some of them including celebrities, (although not all of them actually in the city), many non-governmental organizations called for a march in the city to protest the irrefutable high levels of crime in the country (parallel march in some state capitals were also organized). López Obrador criticized the march as nothing but a political attack, part of the conspiracy against him, referring to the somewhat reduced crime statistics in the city during his rule. Estimates place attendance at the march at between 200,000 and one million people; his government announced there wouldn't be an official count to avoid controversy.
Both before and after the march, the city government has distributed a series of comics, called Tales of the City to combat perceived media attacks on the government and López Obrador. The issue released after the July march hinted to the march being organized and attended mostly by uncaring upper-class citizens, and drew criticism from the march's organizers. The comic has been criticised because it openly promoted López Obrador image, and cost more than MXN $6 million (around USD $550,000) from government funds. Several political analysts and economists considered that this comic is promoting conflict among classes, as it portrays the middle and upper classes taking advantage of the poor and as allies of the "conspirators", that is, Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Vicente Fox, and even ultra-Catholics, who are usually portrayed wearing dreary masks while confabulating against AMLO.
The following year, in July 2005, AMLO criticized a series of TV spots made by a non governmental organization, Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia, as another attack against him, possibly masterminded by ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. These spots show testimonials from people who have suffered kidnappings: actress Martha Cristiana relating the kidnapping of her children and a man relating he had four fingers amputated by his captors, then showing his hands to the camera. Talina Fernandez, host, will join them because of the death of her daughter, actress Mariana Levy due to a heart attack when she saw an armed man approaching her.
Judicial disobedience
A minor controversy which has the potential to become a bigger problem is his legal fight with Spanish company Eumex. Eumex contracted street publicity with former regent (before AMLO's post existed) Óscar Espinosa Villarreal. The contract has been found to be legal, so far, but AMLO says it is extremely advantageous to Eumex and violates Spanish (not Mexican) laws. A few incidents where Eumex workers and executives were detained when installing publicity stands on the sidewalks caught the media attention. Eumex lawyers claim they have a judicial order preventing AMLO's government to interfere with them, and have insinuated this could become another "El Encino" for López Obrador (see Desafuero process).
Desafuero process of 2004-2005
This process was originated by a land owner who sued the Federal District's government on the grounds of improper expropriation of a patch of land called El Encino. This case detonated of López Obrador hands on 2005, when a vote by the Chamber of Deputies lifted his constitutional immunity against criminal charges. When he is officially charged, he will lose all his civil rights, including running for Presidency in 2006, unless he is either quickly acquitted of all charges or serves his sentence before the registration deadline. On April 27, 2005, President Fox announced changes in his cabinet, a reevaluation of the legal case against AMLO and legal changes so civil rights are only suspended until a citizen is found guilty. Fox and López will met on the first week of May, 2005, as part of the efforts to heal the political climate. The new General Attorney found a way to avoid prosecuting López, but it depends on the approval on the private company that first sued him.
Legal Background
The 111th article of the Mexican Constitution states that most high-level elected officials cannot be prosecuted for criminal offenses while in office without a simple majority vote of the Chamber of Deputies stating there are grounds for prosecution. This privilege is usually confused with the freedom of speech protection granted to congressmen by the 61st article, known as fuero (from Latin forum), the process to strip it is known as desafuero. Since immunity from criminal prosecution is almost universally confused with the fuero, both terms will be used interchangeably.
If the Chamber of Deputies votes in the negative, the prosecution can still take place when the official leaves his post, as deputies don't vote on the accusation itself but only on whether there is a reasonable belief that a crime was committed.
If it votes in favor, the official can be prosecuted. A secondary law states in this case the official loses his office immediately.
The constitution mandates state governors are subject to the state congress; it should be noted the Federal District isn't a state.
An individual facing criminal prosecution has his political rights suspended (38th article) so he can't run for office or hold one, at least temporarily. All candidates for the presidential election in 2006 must register no later than January 15, 2006, although the law does allow a change of candidate until May of the same year.
The legal system is mostly untested in cases like this, and the special status of the Federal District (it is no state, until recently it was governed by a man chosen by the President, it has a legislative body that is not a state Congress) will lead to appeals and legal controversies before the Supreme Court.
El Encino case
López Obrador runs exactly this risk. On November 9, 2000, Rosario Robles, his predecessor, expropriated a patch of land from a larger property called "El Encino", in Santa Fe, Cuajimalpa, to build an access road for a private hospital. The owner sued the government on March 11, 2001, and was granted a federal judicial order barring further construction until the matter was definitively settled, as it prevented the owner access his own property. According to prosecutors, López Obrador knowingly disregarded this order several times, a minor criminal offense. By August, the judge found the works continued, so he requested the federal attorney general to make an inquiry and take the necessary steps to bring him into compliance. The federal attorney general had no option but to proceed. Several months passed, partly because until recent times the courts usually sided with the government in expropriation cases and therefore the case covers unknown ground, and partly because it was such an extraordinary step. By May 17, 2004, the federal general attorney could not keep procrastinating (otherwise he would be prosecuted) and announced he would request the removal of AMLO's immunity, which he did two days later. Many months of mutual accusations later, it became clear 2005 would be a pivotal year for the case.
He will be formally prosecuted in a matter of days after losing his immunity. When that happens, he will have to be cleared of all charges preferably before January 15, 2006 if he wishes to run for presidency (although law allows candidate changes until May). López Obrador has declared several times he will forgo all legal means available to him to remain free until a verdict is given, going to prison when the prosecution starts and campaigning from there. He also stated he will be his own lawyer at his criminal trial (his studies are in political science and public administration) although he will receive legal advice from two different lawyers. His party is already considering changing its statutes to allow him to become candidate while jailed. Protests are expected, mostly in Mexico City and some of the more rural states, as he and his party are less popular in other parts of the country.
As part of his campaign before the Chamber of Deputies' vote, he's organizing mass concentrations in public places to pressure the vote in his favor and doing media interviews comparing his process with those held against Mexican revolutionary Madero or civil rights activist Martin Luther King, insisting it is a conspiracy masterminded by ex-President Salinas and President Fox.
A fact that was lost despite having appeared earlier in official documents was that, apparently, López Obrador refused to follow the judicial order barring further construction of accesses to the ABC Hospital because he was sued by them and would have to pay USD 37 million if accesses weren't finished before the deadline. Apparently his government sold land to construct the hospital but for some reason, in agreement with the hospital, such land was exchanged for another. The new land had no accesses, making it useless; the hospital sued AMLO's government. It is unknown at this moment if AMLO's government committed a financial offense in regard to this.
The Chamber of Deputies vote
Despite his vigorous defense, the process couldn't be stopped and López Obrador lost the first battle in a restricted vote by a commission of four deputies on April 1, 2005, opening the door for the full Chamber of Deputies to vote six days later to remove his immunity after hearing both his and the prosecution's arguments. This restricted vote by the commission, originally scheduled two days earlier, decided there was a reasonable belief a crime was committed by three votes to one. Media coverage of the preliminary vote was small, because of the impending demise of Pope John Paul II (he died the next day). This prompted López Obrador to express (hours before the Pope died) his concerns about what he saw as minimal coverage of his desafuero process, but "hours and hours" of special coverage on the Pope's health condition. "(The media only said that) López Obrador lost three to one, as if it were a soccer match", he said, expressing his fears of a return to a time where the media, specially television, was subordinated to the government.
On April 7 2005 López Obrador went to the Chamber of Deputies to present his case. Attendance when the session began was reported to be 488 out of 500 deputies, but apparently one of the deputies arrived late to vote. After a long session where AMLO accused President Fox of being behind the process, the Chamber of Deputies voted by 360 to 127 (with two abstentions) to lift AMLO's constitutional immunity against prosecution. A secondary law states that in cases like this, he is immediately dismissed from his office. The local assembly of representatives (the Federal District has no Congress as its status is somewhere between a state and a county), with a majority of PRD members (AMLO's party) has refused to acknowledge the validity of this process. This will be relevant to the city's future, as they are the ones legally entitled to name AMLO's successor.
Political reactions
There were political reactions both against and in favour of the process from early 2004, climaxing in April 2005 when López Obrador saw his constitutional immunity lifted.
By early 2005 AMLO promoted different forms of protest against the desafuero: posters declaring "No al desafuero" or similar slogans, seen mostly in March, making a census of political and grassroots movements willing to show their support for López Obrador, different political acts by his party, the PRD. The federal government, for its part, reiterated officials can't be exempted from following the law.
AMLO's party, the PRD, has committed itself to support him, and to some extent, his presidential candidacy.
His media strategy is to compare his prosecution with that of killings attributed to previous governments (1968, 1971) and financial scandals (1994-1995) where almost no convictions were made (but heavy fines applied in most of the later), and emphasizing his status as leader in the polls. He also compared himself with Francisco I. Madero, a political candidate in 1910 who was imprisoned by dictator Porfirio Díaz and eventually became leader of the revolution and the next president. He also has compared himself with international civil rights activists who suffered prison at some moment of their life.
He also claims his process to be a political plot orchestrated by, among other top politicians, former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, current President Fox, and presidential pre-candidate Santiago Creel.
The Aftermath
The loss of his constitutional immunity proved to be only the beginning of what seems poised to be a long legal and political struggle. Aside from the political power at risk, the untested legal Mexican system has shown deficiencies which will further prolong controversies.
After the Deputies' vote, the Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal rose a constitutional controversy against them claiming it was they who should have voted since they are similar to a state Congress. (The Federal District isn't a state). The Deputies' filed their own complaint, and both were accepted by the Supreme Court. Currently both are in effect, so AMLO is and is not Head of Government.
When a judge knew about the charges two local deputies of the PAN official party paid a guarantee to keep AMLO away from jail. The judge rejected later both the charges and the guarantee on technical grounds. AMLO called the guarantee a 'cowardly act', as he wants to be imprisoned.
On April 24 a march called by AMLO was attended by an official estimate of 1.2 million people (as estimated by the Federal District government´s Secretary of Public Security). This figure includes union and government workers. The march culminated on the Zócalo, in the center of the city, attendants either expressing their solidarity to Andrés Manuel or their disapproval to the desafuero process. This was probably the most attended political event in recent times, and comparable to the apolitical march against crime held two years before.
On April 27, 2005, President Fox announced changes in his cabinet, a reevaluation of the legal case against AMLO and legal changes so civil rights are only suspended until a citizen is found guilty. In his eight-minute speech to the Nation, he called AMLO "Head of Government", forgetting controversies about whether he was sacked from office or not, and placed great emphasis on the importance of having suspicion-free elections on 2006. This is an important victory to AMLO, but it is still too early to say the case is closed.
On May 4, 2005 the Attorney General's office announced they would drop contempt charges against AMLO on a technicality: they declared he was guilty but his unique post as Head of Government (neither governor nor mayor) makes it unclear a penalty for his crime exists due to the wording of the relevant article. This announcement was refuted by penalists, since the Attorney General can't declare guilt nor innocence, even less interpret the law; they can't drop charges due to the nature of the offense and because charges were pressed by a private company, which has stated will follow the suit. Even if López can't be punished for a technicality (a controversial issue in itself) he could still be found guilty and subject to other penalties. Even more, under current law, López would be prevented from running for office for as long as he is subject to process, and when he resigns to run for presidency he will find himself a common citizen which could be subject to process at any moment, losing his political rights.
The road for the Presidency
In September 2005, Lopez Obrador was nominated as pre-candidate of the PRD to the Presidency of the Republic, after the moral leader of the party, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, declined to participate in the internal elections. His manifesto of ideas and proposals for goverment are contained in the book "50 commitments". It can be viewed, in Spanish, at López Obrador official web site.
Publications
Unless otherwise noted, in Spanish and published in Mexico.
- Los Primeros Pasos (First Steps)
- Del Esplendor a la Sombra (From Splendor to Darkness)
- Tabasco, Víctima de un Fraude (Tabasco, Victim of Fraud)
- Entre la Historia y la Esperanza (Between History and Hope)
- Un proyecto alternativo de nación (An alternate nation project) ISBN 685956979
- Contra el desafuero: mi defensa jurídica (Against the lifting of executive immunity: my legal defense) ISBN 9685957908
See also
External links
- Official site of Andrés Manuel López Obrador
- Mexico mayor runs into the buffers (BBC News)
- Greetings from Mexistan (Washington Post opinion column)
- Support site against the desafuero process
- Authors Elena Poniatowska and Paco Ignacio Taibo describe Obrador's magnetism on Democracy Now! program
- El Universal: Zapatista leader blasts AMLO (in Spanish).
| Preceded by: Rosario Robles Berlanga | Head of Government of the Federal District 2000—2005 | Succeeded by: Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez |
| Preceded by: Porfirio Muñoz Ledo | President of the Party of the Democratic Revolution 1996—1999 | Succeeded by: Pablo Gómez Alvarez |
Categories: 1953 births | Heads of Government of the Federal District | Presidents of the Party of the Democratic Revolution | Former members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party | UNAM alumni
