Mexico's Populist Tilts at a Privileged Elite
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times
MEXICO CITY, June 16 — It is the fourth stop on a long, rainy day of campaigning, but when the leftist candidate rolls into the small coastal town of Tonalá, in southern Mexico, the soaked crowd comes alive with deafening chants of "Obrador! Obrador!"
The candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, gray-haired and slightly stooped, with a nasal voice and a boyish, freckled face, seems to suck up their energy, amplify it, and hurl it back in the form of a simple message. For too long, he booms, politicians, business owners and their families have gotten rich and evaded taxes while the working class has remained mired in poverty.
"The poor pay taxes on everything they buy," he says, cutting to the heart of his theme. "Those of the pure upper class, the influential, don't pay the taxes."
With less than three weeks before the July 2 election, Mr. López Obrador, a leftist former Mexico City mayor, is locked in a dead heat with Felipe Calderón, the conservative candidate from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. After seesawing for weeks, all opinion polls now suggest the race is too close to call.
Win or lose, Mr. López Obrador remains the focus of the election, a polarizing figure who has dragged Mexico's enduring class conflict into the light. In recent speeches, he has vowed to end what he calls "the privileges" of a powerful oligarchy that has dominated politics here for centuries.
His fiery appeals have turned the election into a referendum on whether the country wants to stick with the free trade and pro-business policies of the Fox administration or join the growing number of Latin American countries — Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru among them — that have elected populist left-wingers who want to assert greater state control over the economy and funnel more wealth to the poor.
But to describe Mr. López Obrador as another populist promising handouts to get votes is to miss the most salient part of his message for his supporters. In their eyes, he is a reformer who has promised to stamp out corruption and make corporations and the rich pay more taxes. He has vowed to end the sweetheart deals for government contracts, to stop the government from bailing out failing businesses and to slash the salaries of top bureaucrats and elected officials, who make far more than their counterparts in the United States.
In New York City terms, he wants to dismantle Tammany Hall.
(There's more.)
New York Times
MEXICO CITY, June 16 — It is the fourth stop on a long, rainy day of campaigning, but when the leftist candidate rolls into the small coastal town of Tonalá, in southern Mexico, the soaked crowd comes alive with deafening chants of "Obrador! Obrador!"
The candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, gray-haired and slightly stooped, with a nasal voice and a boyish, freckled face, seems to suck up their energy, amplify it, and hurl it back in the form of a simple message. For too long, he booms, politicians, business owners and their families have gotten rich and evaded taxes while the working class has remained mired in poverty.
"The poor pay taxes on everything they buy," he says, cutting to the heart of his theme. "Those of the pure upper class, the influential, don't pay the taxes."
With less than three weeks before the July 2 election, Mr. López Obrador, a leftist former Mexico City mayor, is locked in a dead heat with Felipe Calderón, the conservative candidate from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. After seesawing for weeks, all opinion polls now suggest the race is too close to call.
Win or lose, Mr. López Obrador remains the focus of the election, a polarizing figure who has dragged Mexico's enduring class conflict into the light. In recent speeches, he has vowed to end what he calls "the privileges" of a powerful oligarchy that has dominated politics here for centuries.
His fiery appeals have turned the election into a referendum on whether the country wants to stick with the free trade and pro-business policies of the Fox administration or join the growing number of Latin American countries — Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru among them — that have elected populist left-wingers who want to assert greater state control over the economy and funnel more wealth to the poor.
But to describe Mr. López Obrador as another populist promising handouts to get votes is to miss the most salient part of his message for his supporters. In their eyes, he is a reformer who has promised to stamp out corruption and make corporations and the rich pay more taxes. He has vowed to end the sweetheart deals for government contracts, to stop the government from bailing out failing businesses and to slash the salaries of top bureaucrats and elected officials, who make far more than their counterparts in the United States.
In New York City terms, he wants to dismantle Tammany Hall.
(There's more.)
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