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04/07/2005:

"Move Against Mexico City Mayor Sets Off Protests"

MEXICO CITY, April 7 - With the fate of the Mexican presidency at stake, hundreds of thousands of people thronged this city's central plaza today to support the leftist Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who faced a vote in Congress that could force him off the ballots in next year's national elections.

The lower chamber of deputies today was scheduled to approve a measure that would strip Mayor López of his official immunity so that he could stand trial in a minor land dispute. And since the Mexican Constitution holds suspects guilty until proven innocent, Mr. López would be banned from politics until the end of the trial.

In addressing the immense crowd today, the 51-year-old Mr. López called the proceedings against him a "farce" staged from the offices of Vicente Fox, Mexico's first opposition president. He charged that the attempt to knock him out of the race for president would undermine country's fragile democracy, moving Mexico back into a past when the political elite ruled like monarchs.

"The move to prosecute me," he said, "returns Mexico to authoritarian times when Los Pinos decided who would or would not become president." Los Pinos is Mexico's presidential mansion.

Mr. López added that President Fox's National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran this country for seven consecutive decades, had forged an unlikely alliance to cripple his left-wing movement and maintain the status quo.

"Whichever of them wins, things remain the same," he said. "They maintain a corrupt and privileged regime, and will continue devouring the country."
Full Article: nytimes.com