Five years have passed since Mexico wildly celebrated president Vicente Fox’s electoral victory, which broke the 71-year grip held by the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Now Mexico is gearing up for July 2006, when the second presidential election since the shift from one-party rule is due to take place. It is too early to call the outcome but already the campaign is rich in crowd-pleasing rhetoric, starved of policy details and centres on a tough battle between long-time political foes.
At present, much of the attention is focused on Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftish Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He recently stepped down as the popular mayor of Mexico City and is leading the polls in a race against potential candidates from the PRI and Mr Fox’s National Action Party (PAN). The former mayor, whose nickname is AMLO (his initials), is known for his fiery rhetoric, which can include stinging criticism of everything from drug traffickers and how Mexican immigrants are treated in the US to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he claims has helped big multinationals more than average Mexicans.
