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Leftist former mayor of Mexico City to run once more for President
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
November 16th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
November 16th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
The leftist former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will run once more for the Mexican presidency in 2012. His narrow loss in the 2006 election sparked massive protests. The 58-year-old Lopez Obrador beat the current mayor of the capital in a poll of 6,000 supporters of left-wing parties this week.
Ebrard replied that "the left divided will just fall into the precipice. I accept the results of this poll," Ebrard has long expressed presidential ambitions.
Representing the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Lopez Obrador led a long, unsuccessful fight to dispute the results of the last election. He lost the 2006 election by less than one percentage point.
López Obrador was president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in his home state. He resigned his post working for the government of this state in 1988 to join the new dissenting left wing of the PRI, then called the Democratic Current, led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. This movement formed the National Democratic Front and later became the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
In 1994, López Obrador ran for the governorship of his home state, but lost to the PRI's Roberto Madrazo in a highly controversial election where Roberto Madrazo was questioned for his excessive expenses in political propaganda. Madrazo's campaign was much more expensive than the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton.
López Obrador gained national exposure as an advocate for the rights of indigenous people when in 1996 he appeared on national TV drenched in blood following confrontations with police force for blocking Pemex oil wells to defend the rights of local indigenous people impacted by pollution.
In addition, López Obrador was president of the PRD from 2 August 1996 to 10 April 1999.
Lopez Obrador is expected to have the support from three other leftist movements, after a polling process aiming to choose a unity candidate among rival factions. The PRD was the first of three major parties to pick a candidate for the July 2012 presidential election.
Three people are vying to represent the conservative National Action Party (PAN) of incumbent Felipe Calderon, who is barred from running again: former ministers Ernesto Cordero, Josefina Vazquez Mota and Santiago Creel. The candidate will be chosen in an internal vote at the start of 2012.
Many analysts are predicting a return to power in 2012 for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for more than seven decades until 2000.
Polls say that the current favorite to win the presidency is PRI ex-state governor Enrique Pena Nieto, expected to be chosen to run by his party's supporters in February.
The campaign officially begins in March.
Lopez Obrador started his political career in his southeastern state of Tabasco with the PRI, which he left at the end of the 1980s. He was mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2006.
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