Mexico City – Hundreds of thousands of people jammed downtown Mexico City on Sunday in a display of support for Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leading candidate in the presidential election next year whose entanglement in a legal case could keep him off the ballot.
The march culminated in a massive rally in the Zocalo, the city’s main square, where Lopez Obrador called the prosecution he faces “not a legal issue, but a political one. The goal is to take away my political right so that my name doesn’t appear on the ballot in the 2006 elections.”
Delivering what sounded like a campaign speech, Lopez Obrador talked at length about his desire to fight poverty and create economic opportunities for the country’s poorest citizens. He also pressed his assertion that his political enemies, who he said were led by President Vicente Fox, were conspiring to keep him out of the presidential race.
“Why are our enemies so afraid of us that they are willing to degrade the institutions of the republic?” Lopez Obrador said. “The only logical explanation is that our enemies have an irrational fear of the national project that we are planning on installing.”
Lopez Obrador and his supporters say he is being railroaded over a relatively minor violation of the law, allegedly ignoring a 2001 court order to cease construction of an access road to a hospital. Fox has repeatedly said that the case has nothing to do with politics and simply demonstrates that Mexico’s criminal justice system is capable of impartially prosecuting even the most popular and powerful of politicians.
ap polls here consistently show that the majority of Mexicans surveyed believe Lopez Obrador’s side of the story.
