Manuel Urena & Alison Dellit
On February 24, 1.2 million people marched through Mexico City, protesting the politically motivated prosecution of the city's mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is a leading contender in the presidential elections scheduled for 2006. Protesters in the "March of Silence" filled 12 lanes of the Paseo de La Reforma in columns that stretched for several miles. Days later, President Vicente Fox fired the attorney-general responsible for pursuing Lopez Obrador.
On the same day as the massive march, expatriate Mexican students organised solidarity pickets and rallies around the world. Protests were held in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Berlin, Paris, Toulouse, Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, San Bernardino, Vancouver, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro and Bogor-Indonesia.
Lopez Obrador, a member of the Party of Democratic Revolution, is stuck in legal limbo after Mexico's Congress voted on April 7 to strip him of his immunity from prosecution, in order to allow him to be prosecuted in an obscure land expropriation case. It is alleged the mayor ignored a court order preventing construction of a hospital access road. Under law, Lopez Obrador's office gives him immunity from such prosecutions. If convicted, he will ineligible to stand as president.
Lopez Obrador claims the charges were drawn up by Fox's administration and other political rivals to keep him out of next year's race, which he leads in all public-opinion polls. Fox has denied the allegations.
Addressing the massive gathering, Lopez Obrador mixed politicking for higher office with decrying the alleged plot against him. "The only logical explanation I can find for these interrogations is that our adversaries have an irrational fear of what we are proposing", he said.
Much of the mayor's popularity stems from new spending in the city on government-funded construction and social programs, including pensions for the elderly. At the portest, he promised to implement similar programs nationwide if he was elected. "The proposal we have is to establish in our country a state of well-being, a state of equality and fraternity, in which the poor, the weak and the forgotten find protection against economic uncertainties, social inequalities", he said. "There are sufficient resources."
In a televised address on April 27, Fox announced that he had fired attorney-general Rafael Macedo. Stating that "My government will prevent no one from participating in the next federal election race", he said that the new attorney-general would review the case against Lopez Obrador and seek to "preserve the country's greatest political harmony within the limits of the law".
From Green Left Weekly, May 4, 2005.
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