Posted on 04/12/2005 3:40:08 PM PDT by Libloather
Mexican Leftist Sees 'Dignified' Jail Time
15 minutes ago
By Catherine Bremer
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's presidential favorite, facing time behind bars in a legal wrangle that has split Mexico, said on Tuesday jail would be a "dignified" place for him to campaign for 2006 elections.
As political allies began a hunger strike, leftist Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said a vote by Congress to force him to face trial in a minor land dispute was a blow to Mexico's fledgling democracy.
"All this farce was for that, because the president's office doesn't want me to participate. This is a setback to Mexico's incipient democracy. We cannot go back to the time when the president said who could and who could not (succeed him)," the left-wing mayor said.
Mexico only established fully democratic elections in 2000, when conservative President Vicente Fox ended 71 years of one-party rule, and questions have been raised about how the country will handle a tricky political crisis.
Lopez Obrador is likely to be jailed in the coming weeks pending trial and questions remain over whether he could still run in the July 2006 election. He has vowed to campaign from jail.
"Prison is terrible, but prison is also dignified. It is a more honorable place for victims of injustice than to be in conditional freedom," he told Mexican television.
"I will protest from prison. I don't want anyone to pay my bail. This is the way to demonstrate there is an injustice and that they are not doing things according to the law."
Fox's National Action Party and the main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, both trailing Lopez Obrador in opinion polls, joined forces last week to strip the mayor of his immunity from prosecution.
An arrest warrant for the mayor is likely to come at the end of April, the attorney general's office said on Tuesday.
POLITICAL MANEUVER
As Lopez Obrador spoke out, his opponents stepped up the political gamesmanship.
In a clash between the federal authorities and leftist local government, the head of the lower house of deputies presented a challenge in the Supreme Court on Monday against the Mexico City legislative assembly. Last week, the assembly filed a legal challenge rejecting the congressional action against the mayor.
Deputies from Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, boycotted Congress on Tuesday and a PRD senator began a 12-day hunger strike by 16 senators at the gates of Fox's presidential residence.
Between lines of chained barricades manned by police, Sen. Jesus Ortega sat under a plastic canopy and said he would remain there, drinking only water, until midday on Wednesday, when other senators would take over.
"Today is the first phase. It's a 24-hour hunger strike. Tomorrow, two senators will replace me. And it will carry on for the next 12 days," Ortega said, adding local PRD politicians in 20 states planned similar action.
A recent survey found 70 percent of Mexicans think the move to put Lopez Obrador on trial over a piece of private land that he allegedly expropriated to build a hospital access road was a political maneuver.
Lopez Obrador has been like a stone in the shoe of Mexico's political elite since he organized blockades of oil industry installations in his home state of Tabasco in the 1990s as part of environmental protests.
His supporters say generations of corrupt Mexican politicians have gotten away with far more serious crimes, especially before conservative Fox's election.
(Additional reporting by Noel Randewich)
He could cross the border and become a REAL hero...
I think this guy got a hold of some really bad drugs. He should sue his dealer for malpractice.
I can only imagine how liberal this mayor must be in comparison.
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