By Adam Thomson
The Financial Times
Published: August 21 2006 19:53 | Last updated: August 21 2006 19:53
It is mid-morning in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s imposing central square, but already Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s small nylon tent is uncomfortably hot. The pink roses shoved into a glass on the camping table seem to be losing their battle for life and the Mexican flag hanging from a wooden pole in the corner looks too out of place to give his makeshift surroundings anything resembling a presidential tinge.
Ever since Mr López Obrador, leftwing candidate in the election for president on July 2, lost by a razor-thin 244,000 votes to Felipe Calderón of the ruling centre-right National Action party, he has been “fighting to save democracy”.
For the leader of Mexico’s Democratic Revolution party, the first task in saving democracy is forcing the country’s electoral tribunal to order a full recount. Only this could “clean” an election that he claims was riddled with irregularities and subjected to nefarious influence by electoral authorities, business, local media and, in particular, Vicente Fox, the outgoing president and a member of Mr Calderón’s party.
Mr López Obrador’s problem is that, more than three weeks after he ordered the occupation of the Zócalo and Paseo de la Reforma, one of the city’s biggest avenues, the tribunal appears in no mood to heed the campaigner’s demands. Besides, time is running out: it must declare a president-elect by September 6.
No matter. In a rare interview, Mr López Obrador told the Financial Times at the weekend that not only would his struggle continue but that it would also become more radical and incorporate new acts of “civil resistance” to press his case.
All this has come as little surprise to his critics, who brand the silver-haired 52-year-old simply as an unreformed leftist campaigner with an authoritarian streak and scant regard for legal process.
They would probably be unsurprised, too, to learn what Mr López Obrador is reading: Sources on the History of the Mexican Revolution, a large leather-bound book with gold leaf on the spine. “You have to know history to know what to do in circumstances . . .”, he says before tailing off into silence.
Mr López Obrador has been reading about José Vasconcelos, a prominent revolutionary figure who later put down his loss in the 1929 presidential election to fraud and called on supporters to begin an armed struggle. And like that of Vasconcelos, Mr López Obrador is aware that the story of his own struggle might be retold for future generations.
“Never in this country’s history has an opposition movement managed to bring together so many people,” he says. “This is a historic moment because the next few days will define the future of democracy in Mexico, the role of the institutions and respect for the constitution.”
But he also says that his movement is peaceful. On July 30, when he called on hundreds of thousands of supporters who had gathered to protest against the election result to occupy the Zócalo and Paseo de la Reforma, he explained that each camp should promote culture and entertainment, including theatre, chess, poetry recitals and painting workshops for children.
The result has been the transformation of a thoroughfare into a fanfare of entertainment. In the Zócalo itself, where about 5,000 supporters have joined Mr López Obrador’s camp, a stage has hosted live music daily.
As a political strategy, however, most analysts believe the call for peaceful civil resistance is a big mistake. The resulting traffic chaos from the blockade of Reforma has annoyed many residents in the capital, which is by far Mr López Obrador’s biggest support base. An increasingly radical strategy may also alienate members of his own party, which did well at the legislative level. Before long, they argue, instead of becoming a new Vasconcelos, he may find himself a lonely – and insignificant – character.
Mr López Obrador admits that “there has been a drain of support” since he began his civil resistance campaign. He also accepts that less than half the population supports him in his struggle. In the capital, for example, he believes he now has the backing of 38 per cent of citizens.
But he insists that he had no option but to challenge the authorities. “You can’t stop them unless you take these kinds of steps. The way to fight fraud and to overcome the news blackout is what we are doing now,” he says. “If we hadn’t taken Reforma [the occupied avenue], we would not exist.”
He says the guiding light in his movement is “moral and political authority”. For him, much of that authority is based on irrefutable fact. For about a week following the election, Mr López Obrador held daily press conferences to present video footage of what he claimed was conclusive proof of vote-tampering. Now, following a very limited recount of the votes ordered by the electoral tribunal, he says there is further evidence of “irregularities”.
For many others, though, his moral authority is based less on fact but rather on a deeply rooted – almost spiritually unquestioning – belief that it is his mission to purge Mexico’s political system of the corruption he sees afflicting it. Indeed, in his tent, much of what he says supports that view. He insists, for example, that he does not worry that his struggle could erode his enormous political capital.
“If this were about power for power’s sake then, yes, they could say that this person is stubborn and capricious, that he wants to become president at any cost. But the people understand that I am not vulgar and ambitious, that we are fighting for principles and ideals.”
That is why, he maintains, his political opponents find him hard to deal with. “They are used to dealing with traditional politicians,” he says. “So when they tell me that I am no longer acting like a politician but like a social leader my heart fills with pride because what they are telling you is ‘you are not corrupt’.”
Where will all this lead? That is still difficult to tell. But Mr López Obrador says September 16 will be a “historic day”. He plans to bring together 1m of the movement’s “delegates” that day to decide on what action to take “to decide the future of our movement”. What he is sure about, however, is that the occupation will remain and that “the struggle will continue”.
In that case, if the tribunal rules against him, Mr López Obrador could be calling his tent home indefinitely.
Read a full transcript of the interview at www.ft.com/obrador
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
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