Obrador to be Mexico's 'parallel president'

Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans celebrated their Independence Day in a mass rally to denounce the winner of the July 2 presidential election and pledge their allegiance to the losing candidate. With a show of hands, the huge crowd of delegates to the so-called National Democratic Convention on Sept. 16 agreed to recognize leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the country's rightful president and join a campaign of boycotts and civil disobedience under his direction. "This is the beginning of the road to building a new republic," Lopez Obrador said in an acceptance speech that lashed out at Mexico's rich and politicians who protect them. The demonstration brought supporters from across the country. Pedro Perez, a 61-year-old coffee exporter from Mexico City, watched from a hotel rooftop. He told the Associated Press: "This is a very important day for all of us who have defended democracy and want the country to change for the good of everyone." Although it was unclear how Lopez Obrador would establish a parallel government, the rally was a strong rebuke of National Action Party candidate Felipe Calderón, who defeated Lopez Obrador by slightly more than half a percentage point. Delegates agreed Lopez Obrador should take office Nov. 20, a national holiday commemorating the start of Mexico's 1910 revolution. They also supported a boycott of major firms, such as Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola, that are among a group of businesses Lopez Obrador accused of illegally supporting Calderón's campaign. Mexico's top election court rejected Lopez Obrador's fraud claims and named Calderón president-elect with a tiny winning margin of 234,000 votes out of 41 million cast. The former energy minister is promising pro-business reforms and would be a close ally of Washington, bucking a trend of leftist gains across Latin America in recent years. "It should be clear why we've taken this road," Lopez Obrador said. "It's not because of a whim, or anything personal... This is the firm and honorable response to those who have converted our political institutions into a grotesque farce. They can keep their pirated institutions and their phony president, but they cannot keep our fatherland and our national dignity." Lopez Obrador launched a civil resistance campaign in August and his supporters blockaded central Mexico City, foreign banks and government ministries. It caused traffic chaos in the capital but did little to help him win support for the vote-rigging claims. An almost seven-week blockade of the Zocalo and Mexico's central business district was lifted on Sept. 15 to allow the armed forces to hold their parade, and it will not return. Some historians said the convention echoed the alternative plans for Mexico put forward by revolutionary heroes like Emilio Zapata and Francisco I. Madero 100 years ago. "The slow, difficult, incremental construction of the Mexican nation and state has passed through dozens of plans, made in the heat of political conflict," said one historian, Lorenzo Meyer. The Sept. 16 rally filled Mexico City's central square and spilled into surrounding blocks. Hours earlier, President Vicente Fox presided over the annual Independence Day military parade at the spot, drawing a few hecklers. Fox had planned to give the traditional shout for independence–an echo of Miguel Hidalgo's call for rebellion against Spain 196 years ago–from a balcony overlooking the Zocalo on the evening of Sept. 15, as he did last year. But Lopez Obrador, whose supporters had transformed the square into a protest camp, said he also planned to give the shout there. If Fox had not changed his mind, both the president and López Obrador would have been in the same place at midnight Sept. 15, one on a government palace balcony and the other on a platform, separately presiding over the most historic and popular Mexican civic ceremony which commemorates the start of the war of independence from Spain, in 1810. Fears of confrontation with Lopez Obrador supporters forced Fox in last-minute negotiations to move his ceremony to Dolores Hidalgo, the site of Hidalgo's original call. The mayor of Mexico City, a Lopez Obrador ally, gave the cry in the Zocalo. It is the second time this month that Lopez Obrador has faced down Fox. The losing candidate had promised to block Fox's annual State of the Nation address to a joint session of Congress. Soldiers formed a perimeter around the congressional hall, expecting a wave of street protesters. Instead, congressional members of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party took over the dais and turned Fox away. Fox, who made history in 2000 by ending seven decades of single-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, leaves Calderón a country divided. Both men have supported Mexico's decade-long transition to a more open, free-market economy that relies on private investment to create new jobs. Now Calderón, who takes office Dec. 1, faces the difficult task of persuading Lopez Obrador supporters that he too is serious about Mexico's lackluster job growth, high rate of poverty and the concentration of wealth among a small elite. Lopez Obrador appears ready to wage a civil resistance campaign that will use both street protests and his party's growing political clout to pressure the incoming administration on behalf of Mexico's poor. The left does not recognize the legitimacy of president-elect Calderón, and has announced that it will endeavor to prevent his inauguration on Dec. 1. They also call Fox a "traitor to democracy" for openly backing his party's candidate in the campaign. Elected members of Lopez Obrador's party will also face pressure in the coming weeks as they decide whether to remain loyal to their leader as his movement shifts further left. Lopez Obrador aide Manuel Camacho Solis said followers were now leaning toward becoming more like a traditional political opposition. "We are getting to the point where there should be a space for politics and a space for protest. It's not just protesting against Calderón anymore," he said. "The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which is the power base of this whole opposition movement, is experiencing great tension between those who are in favor of abiding by the established institutions and those who are talking of revolution," said Pascoe, who left the PRD in 2003 and subsequently supported Calderón in the campaign leading up to the July elections. Some PRD legislators and local authorities say they are interested in dialogue with the new government, but others refuse to engage in talks. "We are not divided, it's just that there are different points of view, but we all agree together on supporting our leader (López Obrador)," the secretary general of the PRD, Guadalupe Acosta, told IPS.