MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mexico City's mayor begins presidential race July 31

Mexico City's mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador the most popular politician in the country announced Monday that he would step down this summer to begin his bid for the presidency of Mexico. Resignation would be effective July 31.

Mr. Lopez Obrador who belongs to the left wing PRD (Democratic Revolution Party) and has a comfortable lead in the public opinion polls for the July 2006 general elections, made the announcement three days after talks with President Vicente Fox whose administration recently dropped a case against the mayor that threatened to leave him out of the race.

Last April 7 Mexican Congress stripped the popular mayor of his immunity from prosecution exposing him to a contempt of court case following a dispute over road access to a city hospital through a private plot of land.

Mr. Lopez Obrador accused president Fox of being behind the Congressional decision and the case to scuttle his presidential bid, a charge that the president repeatedly denied.

However several protests in support of the popular mayor culminating with an April 24 massive march that brought 1.2 million people into Mexico City's main square, together with serious criticism from opinion-makers both in Mexico and abroad, forced Mr. Fox to back step from the legal offensive against Mr. Lopex Obrador.

April 27 President Fox sacked Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and ordered a review of the case. Last Friday both leaders met for 20 minute at the presidential Los Pinos palace and agreed on rules for a "clean, free and peaceful" election process.

The other most probable candidates for next year's presidential election are Interior Minister Santiago Creel who belongs to the ruling PAN and a former governor, Roberto Madrazo from the once dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) but now leading the opposition.

PRI which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000 questioned the Fox administration's reasons for dropping the case against Mr. Lopez Obrador and suggested that the president and the mayor had cut a "shady deal" with an eye in next year's election. PRI's 71-year reign was ended by Mr. Fox's victory in 2000. Mr. Lopez Obrador PRD, a splinter group of PRI never won a presidential election.