Mexican president losing war on drugs, polls indicate


09:17 PM CDT on Friday, June 6, 2008
By LAURENCE ILIFF and ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – President Felipe Calderon is losing the fight against drug traffickers on the field of public opinion, two polls this week show, as he faces the possible rejection of an anti-drug package with the United States and calls to change tactics.




Update on Mexico's drug war
06/06/2008



The surveys show that most Mexicans support Calderon's actions in taking on the narcos. His approval ratings remain high at just over 60 percent.

But by a 2-1 margin Mexicans believe that powerful and well-armed organized crime groups are outgunning the government even as the Army takes a high-profile and unprecedented role in civilian crime-fighting.

One of the regions particularly hard hit by the narcos' turf war – with police and soldiers stuck in the crossfire – has been on the northern border with Texas, especially Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso.

Analysts generally supportive of Calderon's courage in taking on the drug cartels and their paramilitary enforcers say that it's tough to swallow the government's message that more violence and beheadings mean victory and not defeat.

Public opinion is critical to the direction of the war since Calderon has made it a cornerstone of his 18-month presidency – and because he is asking for sacrifice from the Mexican people, especially families affected by the more than 450 police killed over that period, analysts said.

One apparent casualty of Mexican public opinion is a proposed $1.4 billion U.S. aid package known as the Merida Initiative. The U.S. Congress both reduced funding for the first year and then added human rights conditions that have made it unacceptable to its southern neighbor.

"Public opinion always matters," said political columnist Juan Jose Huerta, who gives Calderon high marks for disrupting drug cartel operations and having a long-term strategy to chip away at their operations.

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But the reality on the ground is jarring, he said.

"The wave of attacks against police has been so overwhelming in the last weeks," he said, "that people are in shock."

Huerta said the government should change its message and better protect police.

"You have to say it's a frontal assault without saying it necessarily implies the death of government forces," he said. "That is the wrong emphasis."

As the number of drug-related deaths during Calderon's administration has passed the 4,000 mark, an incipient sense of war fatigue has started to set in, say the drug war's toughest critics, who compare it to the slow but steady erosion of support for the Iraq war by Americans.

Nightly media images of poorly trained police getting mowed down has not helped, analysts said.

In one incident late last month in Culiacan, Sinaloa, an anonymous caller reported armed men in an area known for drug activity.

Some 20 federal police rushed to the scene only to be ambushed with fragmentation grenades and gunmen shooting from all directions.

Eight federal police officers died, the most ever in a single day. And news reports played up the fact that they appeared to have been outsmarted and outgunned by a much smaller group of narcos, only one of whom died in the shootout.

"The Mexican war is not so different from the Iraqi one," wrote columnist Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez. "Both interventions served the presidents to show determination and courage to face a fearsome enemy. ... But beyond the determination shown by President Calderon at the beginning of his term, it's not clear what he's seeking nor how he can evaluate the effect of his policies."

This week's surveys were published in two influential Mexico City newspapers, Reforma and El Universal.

El Universal said 56 percent of respondents in the national poll gave the upper hand to the cartels compared to only 23 percent for the government. Twenty-one percent had no opinion in the poll, which has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.5 percent.

The Reforma poll has almost identical numbers and something more ominous: eroding support for how Calderon is handling the fight.

Forty-two percent of respondents had a "favorable" opinion of Calderon's performance – the lowest percentage since the tracking poll began in September 2007 – and nine percentage points lower than in March.

About 36 percent disapproved of his handling of the drug war, up from 31 percent in March. The poll had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.5 percent.

El Universal also had an interesting nugget that Huerta said may have to be explored over the long-term – majority support for the legalization or decriminalization of some drugs to weaken cartels.

In the epicenter of the drug fight – Culiacan – Margarito Ayala Baron, 54, had a message for Calderon: "I admire your guts, but get a new team."

He runs a mechanics shop and said most of his clients have ties to organized crime.

With a police and military crackdown in the capital of Sinaloa state and the home base of the Sinaloa cartel, Ayala Baron figures he's lost more than 30 percent of his business. But he's not complaining.

"I would rather lose some of my business than lose my country," he said. "But I don't know that the president has the support of his own people. He doesn't have anyone backing him up because corruption is endemic."

Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Norte newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, said the perception that the cartels are better prepared than the police is accurate.

"The police are practically non-existent because they're so afraid they will be next. They don't even bother to use their radios anymore because they fear the radios are tapped. The government looks overwhelmed."

U.S. officials say they understand the concerns of Mexicans who worry that organized crime is actually winning the war.

"We shouldn't fool ourselves, said White House Drug Czar John Walters. "Their goal is not only to destroy rule of law in Mexico. If you live along the border you should know their goal is to destroy rule of law in United States."






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