Mexico City – A campaign commercial likening Mexican presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is threatening to worsen already chilly relations between the two countries.
On Wednesday, Mexican President Vicente Fox said through a spokesman that “the electoral process is only Mexicans’ business.”
“No country can intervene in the election,” spokesman Ruben Aguilar said, responding to Chavez’s complaints that images of him were being used to attack Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who leads public-opinion polls ahead of the July 2 presidential election.
“The Mexican right is using television spots … to try and stop the rise of the Mexican left and of its presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,” Chavez said earlier this week.
Fox is barred from seeking re-election and leaves office in December. Lopez Obrador is running with a consortium of leftist parties against two other major candidates, one of them former Energy Secretary Felipe Calderon of Fox’s conservative National Action Party.
The ad, which concludes by flashing the National Action Party’s name, features a video clip of Chavez threatening his Mexican counterpart. It then cuts to Lopez Obrador telling Fox to “shut up, citizen president” during a recent campaign stop.
