Presidential contest in Mexico a virtual tie as campaign ends

By S. Lynne Walker
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
June 29, 2006

MEXICO CITY – As the last bits of confetti fluttered over more than 200,000 people gathered at leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador's final rally, Mexicans' uncertainty about who will be their next president as palpable as it was on the first day of the campaign.

The campaign season officially ended yesterday after six months of personal insults and mudslinging. But the race is so tight and the electorate so volatile that no one can predict the outcome of Sunday's election.


Felipe Calderón
Roy Campos, president of Consulta Mitofsky polling firm, expects a record 40 million people to cast ballots.

“Why are so many people going to vote? Because for the first time, the presidential race has three (credible) candidates, three political parties and three platforms,” Campos said.

In Mexico's fledgling democracy, choosing among three fiercely competitive candidates has been a new and, for some, unsettling process.

Roberto Madrazo
Under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled for 71 years, the winner was known as soon as the PRI announced its candidate. When Vicente Fox ran for president in 2000, he had only one viable opponent and campaigned with a single message – to oust the PRI from power. Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term.

But in this campaign, voters were bombarded with unfamiliar tactics aimed at persuading them to jump onto each candidate's bandwagon. They were confused by conflicting polls that showed each candidate had a chance of becoming the next president.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Even now, Campos said, 4 million people – 10 percent of the turnout expected on Election Day – are still wavering on their decision.

“These are people who can still be influenced to change their vote,” he said. “They are the ones who are going to decide the election.”

After being badgered for months by negative TV and radio spots, Mexicans are entering a “quiet period.”

As of midnight last night, the candidates were prohibited from campaigning. All advertising ceased, and pollsters are forbidden from releasing any new results.

“This gives the voters a period of reflection,” Campos said. “In this period of silence, voters make their decision without the influence of the spots and the influence of the political parties.”

Last week, polls showed López Obrador and Felipe Calderón, of Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, in a statistical tie. But a telephone poll taken yesterday showed López Obrador leading with 36 percent, said pollster Federico Berrueto. His Mexico City polling firm is conducting daily surveys, even though the results can't be published in Mexico.

Calderón has 31 percent, according to Berrueto's latest survey. Roberto Madrazo of the PRI has 26 percent.


With a 3 percent margin of error, “I cannot tell you today if López Obrador or Felipe Calderón is going to win,” Berrueto said. “But Madrazo is so far away from first place that it is almost impossible for him to win.”
If yesterday's rally is any indication, momentum is building for López Obrador. People wearing his trademark yellow streamed into downtown Mexico City, turning the streets into a river of gold.

As they stood in the driving rain, they strained to catch a glimpse of the man who hopes to make history by becoming Mexico's first president from the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.

His humble style and his way of speaking – like an ordinary Mexican, not a privileged aristocrat – has made people believe in his dream of transforming Mexico.

“We need a change,” said Modesto Luna, who sells clothes for a living. “To have change, we have to give this man a chance.”

López Obrador has campaigned on a platform of helping Mexico's poor.

“We are all equal,” he told the crowd.

On his first day in office, López Obrador pledged to begin visiting Mexico's poorest communities, places such as the slums of Chalco outside Mexico City where “million of families live without even the most basic services.”

He said he will go to Oaxaca, where teachers are striking for better salaries, to Chiapas, where the Zapatista rebels are still waiting for a resolution to their demands, to the impoverished southern state of Guerrero, the site of one of the hemisphere's poorest communities.

“On July 2, you will not only elect the next president of Mexico,” he told his supporters. “You are also going to choose the project that we want for our nation, for ourselves, for our children, for the next generations.”

López Obrador's emotional rally in the city's streets offered a sharp contrast to Calderón's rally on Sunday in Mexico City's Aztec Stadium.

Many of Calderón's supporters traveled all night in buses paid for by his campaign to attend the festive event replete with mariachis and balloons. But by the time he spoke, some of the nearly 100,000 attendees were so tired that they stretched out on the stadium seats and went to sleep.

Calderón, an attorney with a master's degree from Harvard, promised to lead the country into an era of “peace and prosperity” if he is elected. And he warned that López Obrador will bring economic crisis and political chaos to Mexico.

While Calderón described himself as a “man of dreams,” he said López Obrador is backed by “those who promote hate and those who look for discord.”

He agreed with López Obrador on a single point.

The vote on Sunday, Calderón said, “will determine the course of the country for decades.”

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