Mexico City – With Mexico’s presidential race starting to look like a dead heat, two top contenders laid into each other during Tuesday night’s debate, trading verbal barbs while the longtime front-runner failed to show up as promised.
With a lead that looked solid at 10 percentage points in public-opinion polls just two months ago, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decided to skip the first of two nationally televised debates. But a pair of new polls published Tuesday show him falling about even with ruling-party rival Felipe Calderon.
“He didn’t come to this debate because he doesn’t have viable proposals,” Calderon said of Lopez Obrador. “The right to debate is the right of the citizens. In this he prefers to turn his back on you.”
Lopez Obrador, who served as Mexico City’s mayor until last year, left a podium standing empty on stage. That was good news for Calderon and Roberto Madrazo, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party controlled Mexico’s presidency from 1929 until 2000.
Madrazo seized on a highly unpopular proposal backed by the government of outgoing President Vicente Fox but defeated in Congress which would have bolstered government coffers by raising a national flat tax and extending it to food and medicines, currently exempt.
“Mexico is in reverse. All things that should be up – jobs, salaries, competitively – are down. And all that should be down – insecurity, taxes, gas prices – has gone up,” Madrazo said.
While Lopez Obrador plans to join the final debate on June 6, his no-show could make or break the race, now perilously close with just a bit more than two months to go before the July 2 election.
