Mexico City – In his last state-of-the-nation address before the election to replace him next July, President Vicente Fox strove Thursday to convince skeptical Mexicans that much has changed since he took office five years ago.
While trumpeting democratic reforms, social programs and the country’s economic stability, Fox acknowledged disappointment with his unfulfilled promises and spoke as a leader who increasingly will have to struggle to keep the nation’s attention.
The speech to Congress came after a defensive, weeks-long campaign of television and radio ads in which Fox tried to combat an image of himself as an ineffective lame duck, while a noisy campaign among his potential successors is already well underway.
Mexico, Fox said Thursday, is “a better country than the one that existed only a few years ago. Nevertheless, it would be useless to deny that there are many other challenges to be faced.”
Before Fox’s victory in 2000, the penultimate annual speeches of his predecessors in the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, were highlights of the party’s 71 years in power.
Although outgoing presidents deliver one last speech after the election, this address was the time they could tout accomplishments and prepare the ground for their handpicked successors.
In contrast, Fox’s rule has been increasingly overshadowed by the heated contest to take his place among almost a dozen candidates.
This week, the buildup to the president’s speech took a back seat to the PRI’s bitter battle to pick a new party leader as its two top presidential contenders, Roberto Madrazo and Arturo Montiel, joined in boasting that the former ruling party was in a good position to retake the presidency next year.
If that happens, many will blame Fox and his failure to deliver on promised economic reforms or relieve a growing fear of drug-related violence and crime in Mexico’s big cities and along the U.S. border.
“Today, Mexico wants deeds, not words,” said Heliodoro Diaz Escarraga, a PRI lawmaker who gave the official response to Fox’s speech. “Mexico needs to recover its faith in itself and in the government.”
The president’s speech was interrupted a few times by heckling from opposition members of Congress, but much less than the rowdy protests that marred his speech last year.
