Mexico City –Mexican President Vicente Fox and his nemesis, Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, agreed Wednesday to meet to discuss criminal charges pending against the mayor.
But it wasn’t immediately clear whether a meeting would defuse the political crisis that has enveloped this country since Congress lifted the mayor’s immunity from prosecution three weeks ago.
Analysts said Fox’s decision to meet with Lopez Obrador is a recognition that Lopez Obrador is holding the political high ground in a struggle that began when Fox’s attorney general charged Lopez Obrador with criminal contempt of court in a minor land dispute.
More than 1.2 million people marched Sunday in a silent protest of Congress’ April 7 decision to strip Lopez Obrador of his immunity from prosecution, and polls consistently show most Mexicans believe the charges are a way to keep Lopez Obrador from running for president next year. Polls also show that Lopez Obrador is the leading candidate to replace Fox, who can’t run for re-election.
No date for the meeting has been announced. “There has to be political solution. The nation, from the poor to the elite, is taking too much political heat to continue with this soap opera,” said Eric Fernandez, a political scientist professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana.
Meanwhile, Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha faces a deadline today to refile charges against the mayor. Charges were filed last week, but a judge declined to accept the case, saying it had been improperly drawn.
The judge noted that two members of the president’s political party had posted bail for Lopez Obrador before the case was actually presented, raising the question of whether politics, and not the law, was the real issue. The judge also noted the attorney general didn’t ask for Lopez Obrador to be jailed.
The rejection was a major embarrassment for the government, which has been studying the case against the mayor for months.
Prosecutors can refile the charges with a different judge, ask for an arrest warrant or appeal the judge’s decision to dismiss the case.
Another scenario that would signal a truce would be to not file charges at all, or drop the case.
The agreement for a Fox-Lopez Obrador meeting came after a week of acrimonious comments from the mayor, the president and their supporters.
On Tuesday, Fox told an audience in Oaxaca state that the country had to “remove foolish populists” who generate more poverty by opposing free-market policies – a reference to Lopez Obrador, whose left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party is anathema to Fox’s conservative National Action Party.
Lopez Obrador has demanded an apology from the president. A Lopez Obrador spokesman earlier in the week demanded that the president’s staff stop referring to Lopez Obrador as “Mr. Lopez” and use his political title and full name when mentioning him.
