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Protests expected when Fox addresses nation for last time

By S. Lynne Walker
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
September 1, 2006

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's escalating political crisis threatens to erupt in the newly installed Congress tonight when leftist legislators angered by the outcome of the July 2 presidential election say they will block President Vicente Fox's state-of-the-nation address.

With Fox vowing he will not be prevented from delivering his last message to the nation before leaving office, his opponents are bracing for a showdown.

“They're looking for some bloodied heads,” said George Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary. “They want some martyrs.”

Security was tight yesterday outside the Congress, where hundreds of secret service agents, federal and city police patrolled behind concrete and metal barriers setting a perimeter almost two miles from the imposing building.

Water cannons were in position to push back protesters if they try to block Fox from entering the building, as infuriated supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador have threatened ever since a federal electoral tribunal rejected their demand for a full recount in the election he lost by fewer than 244,000 votes.

Mexico's state-of-the-nation address is usually a calmer affair, with Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagún, smiling and holding hands as they walk up the steps of the legislative palace.

Tonight, however, Fox will be escorted by his security team through a basement entrance and into a room behind the lectern in the congressional chamber.

Once Fox steps onto the podium, legislators from López Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, say they will prevent him from delivering the speech – which his office said would be shorter this year – to a national television audience.

If PRD legislators succeed in shouting Fox down and forcing him to leave the Congress, it would mark the first time in modern history that a Mexican president was prevented from giving the annual address.

“We do not want him to give his speech to the Congress. He has contributed to the divisions in this country,” said PRD Congresswoman Maricela Contreras. “He should submit his state-of-the-nation address in writing and not go to the Congress.”

Jorge Zermeño, the president of the lower House of Congress who is from Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, asked fellow lawmakers to “be respectful so the president can come to the tribunal and express verbally what he has put in writing.”

“I am calling on legislators to understand the responsibility we have to receive the president of the republic,” he said, “and to hold an event that has a long tradition in this country.”

Once Fox starts speaking, however, Zermeño said he will take stern measures to ensure that the president completes the speech reflecting on his six years in office.

“If there is disorder, I will do whatever is necessary so that the legislators permit the president of the republic to speak,” Zermeño said.

With both sides hardening their positions, tonight's address promises to become a spectacle that underscores just how fragile the country's institutions have become, political analysts said.

“President Fox is going to the Congress to provoke this reaction and to make it evident to everybody that the PRD is behaving badly,” said political analyst Jorge Chabat. “It is one thing to hear López Obrador's statements and another thing watching the people from the PRD shouting and pushing President Fox.”

Such a display would ensure that “the PRD's standing continues in free fall,” said Grayson, setting the stage for the Federal Electoral Tribunal to declare PAN candidate Felipe Calderón the winner of the presidential election by Wednesday's deadline.

“The PRD will have been even more discredited, as will López Obrador,” he said, “and people will breathe a huge sigh of relief that the country is going to have a responsible person at the helm.”