MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Political uncertainty looms over Mexico

The attempt to rule out from next year' Mexican presidential race front-runner Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has created one of the most serious political storms in recent years.

Mr. Lopez Obrador who was stripped Thursday by Congress of his political immunity is waiting to be arrested to face charges pressed by the federal government's Attorney General Office allegedly for breaching a lower court order after allowing the construction of an access road to a city hospital.

The Mayor denies the charges and has repeatedly claimed it's a plot involving conservative President Vicente Fox and members of the once-dominant PRI opposition party to stop him running in the poll and end his political career.

However President Vicente Fox speaking from the Vatican where he was attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II, said that Congress's lifting of the mayor's immunity from prosecution was "an example of legality".

But academics and political scientists have another view of the delicate scenario which questions the "maturity" of Mexico' governance and democratic system.

"The lifting of Lopez Obrador's immunity represents a tough test for Mexico's incipient democracy" argued political scientist Gabriel Gutierrez.

Octavio Paredes, president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences issued a statement saying that lawmakers' decision to expose the Mayor to prosecution "is very unfortunate, it poses an unnecessary problem when what needs to be done is to strengthen democracy and target on the great national problems".

Raymundo Riva Palacio from Mexico City's El Universal influential newspaper said that even when Mr. Lopez Obrador "has committed irregularities that have been documented" the Mayor is in his right when claiming "hypocrisy" from the Fox administration, "which in this case has made the rule of the law a weapon of convenience".

Prominent Mexican intellectuals, including writer Carlos Fuentes, have warned that the country's left wing opposition could turn militant if they interpret the prosecution of Lopez Obrador as a move by the "establishment" to bar the opposition from power be it "by fair or foul means".

If a court finally decides to arrest and prosecute the immunity stripped Mayor who is also seen as the candidate with better chances of succeeding Mr. Fox, the political atmosphere in Mexico could change radically with fears of violence outbreaks.

Addressing 200,000 followers Thursday during a rally in Mexico City's massive Zocalo plaza just hours before the congressional vote, Mr. Lopez Obrador called for a peaceful protest. He also emphasized that he "will be waiting at home to be arrested"

Public opinion polls show Mr. Lopez Obrador comfortably defeating any of the candidates likely to be put forward by Fox's PAN or by the PRI, the two parties whose combined votes in Congress decided the Mayor's immunity stripping. Polls also indicate that a majority of PRI voters and half of PAN supporters disapprove of the legal offensive against the Mayor.

Mr. Fox, now in the fifth of his six-year term and constitutionally barred from running again, said from Rome that the congressional move is proof of "the strength of Mexican institutions".

Interior Minister Santiago Creel, seen by many as President Fox's preferred successor, proclaimed that Mexico "is at peace and working, because it is a country where the rule of the law and democratic institutions prevail".

On Friday US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher described the situation as "an internal matter for the Mexicans to decide". Asked several times whether the matter was an undemocratic ploy, Boucher repeated, "We think it's something for them (the Mexicans) to work out to decide".

Mexico was ruled for seventy uninterrupted years by the PRI and in a historic event in 2000 lost to Mr. Fox's PAN. His six years have been described as a transition from a hegemonic party system to an incipient democracy.

Mr. Lopez Obrador belongs to the Democratic Revolutionary Party, PDR, which splintered from the PRI in the eighties.