In a surprising midnight ceremony at the presidential residence of Los Pinos, outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox handed over the green, white and red presidential sash to incoming president elect Felipe Calderón. Fearing that the inauguration would be blocked, Calderón – a 44- year-old conservative, pro-business politician who is close to the Catholic Church – decided to get a head start on opponents. Calderón follows fellow National Action Party (PAN) member Vicente Fox, who broke the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) seven-decade grip on Mexico in 2000.
But Fox left office Friday at one second after midnight under a cloud of disappointment, leaving behind a country that is currently facing street protests over his successor’s paper-thin election, a southern state engulfed in a crisis, and a worsening war between the drug cartels.
In a live broadcast, Calderon called on Mexicans to leave behind the divisions that have dogged him and the country since the July 2 election. Calderón also swore in some of his staff and said he would not be prevented from taking the official oath of office before Congress later Friday.
On Tuesday, lawmakers of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) – Calderón’s rival in the disputed presidential election, Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) literally fought with the ruling party for control of the speaker’s podium, the area where the swearing-in is to take place before Congress. They later staked out their territory by camping out with blankets and pillows for three days, in an attempt to block the ceremony. According to the Houston Chronicle, the fight has continued an hour before incoming President Felipe Calderón was to take the oath of office.
To make matters interesting, PAN lawmakers were able to seize the speaker’s platform where the oath of office is supposed to take place; however, PRD lawmakers were able to block most of the chamber’s doors. The brutal clash was shown on live television across Mexico. However, in the end, Calderón was able to take the oath of office as Mexico’s president.
Physically protected by ruling party lawmakers and flanked by outgoing President Vicente Fox, Calderon quickly swore to uphold the constitution. The national anthem was then played, momentarily stilling the cat-calls and shouting. Calderon quickly left the chamber as Congress adjourned.
AMLO and the PRD have been a thorn on Fox, Calderón, and PAN’s side. In September, lawmakers of the PRD managed to block Fox from giving his state-of-the-nation speech in Congress, which marked the first time in Mexican history this ever happened to a standing president. Later that month, President Fox was forced to change site of the annual Mexican Independence Day grito that traditionally took place in Mexico City’s central plaza.
On Thursday, legislators from the PRD and the Labor Party voted against a motion to hold Friday morning’s joint legislative session, leaving little hope for PAN’s Party leaders in resolving the crisis. The standoff in Congress has forced Calderón to take unusual steps to avoid clashes in order to keep visiting heads of state from the viewing the chaos that is about to plague his presidency, such as having the transfer of power ceremony take place at Los Pinos. Although legal experts agree that Calderón became Mexico official President one second after midnight on Dec. 1, however, there is only one problem, Calderón still has to take official oath of office oath before Congress. Experts on Mexico’s constitution are left trying to figure out whether Mexico has a president or not some constitutional experts say Calderón must first be sworn in.
Prior to taking the oath of office, Calderón has done his best to ask for unity and reconciliation since the nation’s highest electoral court proclaimed him the winner in September. He has said that his top priorities will be fighting poverty and crime and has pledged to reorganize Mexico’s fractured and ineffective police forces to take on organized crime. However, on November 20, López Obrador declared himself “the legitimate president” of Mexico and has already set up his shadow government. AMLO has already promised to call for more mass protests on any of Calderón’s policies that the PRD does not agree with.
Calderón has already named four people for cabinet positions, which does give insight what Mexico can expect from a Calderón Administration. He has picked Francisco Ramírez Acuña to be his all-important interior minister, the agency in charge of Mexico’s domestic politics and policy. This would suggest that Calderón will be taking a hard line against civil disobedience that has disrupted Mexico for months. Acuña was governor of the western state of Jalisco, where he gained notoriety for brutally quashing leftist protesters in May 2004 and has also been accused of human rights violations.
As Jalisco governor, Ramírez Acuña allegedly authorized the use of excessive force against anti-globalization protesters during a summit of Latin American and European leaders in Guadalajara in 2004. Both national and international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, denounced what they said were arbitrary detentions and even torture of suspects.
“The blatant and prolonged nature of the alleged police abuses strongly suggests that they were carried out with the approval of some level of command within the security forces,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch´s Americas Division after a probe into the incidents.
Calderón has also selected a former high-ranking official of the International Monetary Fund, Agustín Carstens, to finance minister, sending a signal that Calderón intends to pursue a tight monetary policy, keep inflation low and avoid overspending on public programs.
Calderón has also named a team of US-educated economists to his Cabinet, which is a clear signal that Mexico’s government will be run by business.
He has appointed little-known Georgina Kessel of the central bank to be his energy minister. She will be Mexico’s first female to head that department. Kessel is an economist educated at Columbia University and has vowed to modernize the country’s energy sector.
Among the team of US-educated economist that Calderón has named to his Cabinet, two of them were once top members of Mexico’s PRI, the previous ruling party. They are Javier Lozano and Luis Tellez and will take up the positions of labor minister and communications and transport minister.
Mexico’s new labor secretary will be lawyer Javier Lozan, who promised to respect the country’s powerful unions while working with Congress on reforms to make Mexico more business friendly. Lozano severed as deputy secretary of transportation and communications under former President Ernesto Zedillo.
Luis Tellez will run the Communications and Transportation Department. Tellez has a doctorate in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1997 to 2000, Tellez also served under former President Ernesto Zedillo as Mexico’s Secretary of Energy. According to a press release from Sempra Energy, Tellez is credited for restructuring the Mexican electricity sector, by allowing broader private involvement in generating, distributing and transmitting electricity. Up until his appointment, Tellez was managing director for George Bush Senior’s Carlyle Group investment firm. Prior to joining Carlyle, Tellez served as executive vice president of DESC, S.A. de C.V., one of the largest companies in Mexico.
Now that Felipe Calderón is President, Mexico is just another casualty to the US imperialistic empire – a country filled with the very poor, living in wretched slums and working for pennies, while the country is infested with greedy modern day hacienda owners benefiting from Mexico’s new business-friendly government.
How appropriate the saying by former Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz: ¡Pobre México, tan lejos de Dios, tan cerca de los Estados Unidos! (So Far from God; So Close to the United States)
x-posted on ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!