MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Disappearance of prominent Mexican power broker linked to organized crime

Diego Fernandez de Cevallos was a 1994 presidential candidate

Mexican president Felipe Calderon said that organized crime will not settle in the country as it did in Colombia in the nineties. His Sunday statement comes a day after a former Mexican presidential candidate who remained a power broker in the ruling party went missing amid signs of violence.

The Mexican attorney general's office said on Saturday that Diego Fernandez de Cevallos' car was found near his ranch in the central state of Queretaro. Some of his belongings were found inside the car as well as unspecified “signs of violence”.

Mexican newspaper El Universal reported that federal sources said Fernandez de Cevallos had been kidnapped, but a prosecutor's spokeswoman said she could not confirm that.

“We have acted on time to prevent organized crime, --linked to the narcotics cartels--, from escalating as it did in Colombia where some of these networks have taken controls of whole tracks of Colombian territory”.

“We have taken quick and decisive action and hope to solve the scourge in a quicker way than in Colombia, even if it takes time and is costlier”, said the Mexican president. He added that the number of violent crimes per 100.000 population in Colombia is 39 compared with 12 in Mexico.

“The federal government is acting in a very coordinated way” so as to solve events and locate the former presidential candidate, said Calderón.

Fernandez de Cevallos relatives who had planned to have breakfast with him on Saturday morning reported him missing. They said no one had contacted them to ask for a ransom.

Fernandez de Cevallos, 69, was the 1994 presidential candidate of the National Action Party that now governs Mexico and he has continued to be an influential figure, as well as one of Mexico's most successful lawyers.

The bearded, cigar-chomping candidate emerged from relative obscurity during Mexico's first televised debate by presidential candidates in 1994, striking a chord with the middle class with his calls to topple the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had held power since 1929.

He finished second to Ernesto Zedillo that year, but his party finally won the presidency six years later when Vicente Fox was elected. He is described as a “key figure in the Mexican transition to democracy”.