López Obrador Gets Four-Point Edge in Mexico

López Obrador Gets Four-Point Edge in Mexico
June 21, 2006

(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador has extended his advantage in the Latin American country’s presidential race, according to a poll by Parametría. 36.5 per cent of respondents would vote for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) member in next month’s ballot.

Former energy secretary Felipe Calderón of the governing National Action Party (PAN) is second with 32.5 per cent, followed by former Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) with 27 per cent, Patricia Mercado of the Social-Democratic and Peasant Alternative Party (PASC) with three per cent, and Roberto Campa of the New Alliance Party (PNA) with one per cent.

Support for López Obrador increased by one point since early June, while backing for Calderón fell by 1.9 points.

The PAN’s Vicente Fox ended 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the PRI in the 2000 election, winning a six-year term with 42.5 per cent of the vote.
(snip/...)

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/12296

If the US government won't remove or reform NAFTA, then maybe the Mexican government under Obrador will.

Enough people have been ruined by NAFTA as it is.

Which will probably mean that NAFTA is dead.



Mexico hopeful takes hard line vs. NAFTA
Sun Jun 18, 12:17 AM ET

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took his hardest line yet against free trade with the United States, saying for the first time Saturday he would not honor Mexico's commitment under NAFTA to eliminate tariffs on U.S. corn and beans.
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Tariffs on all agricultural products must be removed in 2008 under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But Lopez Obrador said he won't eliminating tariffs on U.S. white corn and beans if elected, showing no allegiance to a deal he sees as harmful to Mexican farmers.

"We are not going to accept this clause that they signed," Lopez Obrador told supporters in Chiapas, an extremely poor farming state.

He also promised to provide the farmers with guaranteed prices, subsidies and loans on favorable terms, some of which may be questionable practices under NAFTA rules.

<snip>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060618/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_leftist_candidate

Lopez Obrador. I would love to see him make overbearing, sadistic _Bush admin. people eat their own words on NAFTA. From Arco's article:

Mexican farmers say hefty agricultural subsidies in the United States give American white corn and beans an unfair advantage over the Mexican market, which depends in large part on small-scale and mostly subsistence farmers. As Mexico's staple crops, corn and beans also carry immense symbolic importance.

Mexicans worry that if these farmers can't sell the nation's signature crops at a price that competes with trucked-in produce from the United States, they will go out of business altogether.

That could severely damage Mexico's agricultural economy, which farmers say has already suffered since the trade deal went into effect in 1994, forcing many to migrate to the United States.

Mexico's agriculture minister pleaded with Canada and the United States this month to reconsider the removal of the corn and bean tariffs, but U.S. Undersecretary for Agriculture J.B. Penn flatly rejected the appeal, saying ]"we have no interest in renegotiating any parts of the agreement."
(snip)

I've read in multiple places NAFTA has crushed sugar cane and cotton growers and their workers as well.

It would be heaven seeing these people get a new beginning in their OWN country, safe from the reaches of _Bush's grubby mitts.

("Everyone" not including exploitative multinational corporations and their corporatist enablers, of course. FUCK THEM.)

GO OBRADOR!

Poll after poll in the last few days show him with a slight but increasing lead, and Calderón dropping slowly but constantly.

I hope he's able to keep this momentum for the next two weeks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060620/pl_nm/mexico_election_usa_dc;_ylt=Al_dGkbFzzf99EXMNNORvv6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Mexico election could put leftist on US doorstep

By Alistair Bell Tue Jun 20, 5:09 PM ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Uneasy at election victories by leftists in Latin America, the United States may soon feel the region's wave of change lapping up against its southern border if a former indigenous welfare officer wins Mexico's presidential election on July 2.


"At stake is the future course of America's influential southern neighbor at a time when Mexico and the U.S. wrangle over border security and immigration issues, and as other Latin American nations turn to left-leaning leaders," U.S. opinion pollster John Zogby said.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is slightly ahead in opinion polls but concerns in Washington that he may join an anti-U.S. axis led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez if he becomes president are unfounded, aides say.

"He is focused primarily on Mexico. He has no plans to seek alliances with other countries to try to confront the U.S. empire," said Ricardo Monreal, a senior aide to the leftist.

And is it really true? I am "the United States," too, and I'm not uneasy. I'm happy about the peaceful, democratic, Leftist revolution in Latin America. Oh, they must mean the Bush junta. THAT "United States"! The fatcat elite. The Billionaires Club. The murderers of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. The torturers of prisoners. The losers of billions of dollars in Iraq, and 50,000 absentee ballots in Florida. The $10 trillion deficit spenders. The pigs who run elections on 'TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code with no paper trail. THEY'RE "uneasy."

Well, friends, they now have the name "United States," and the rest of us--the vast majority who hate Bush's war, hate torture, and long for peace and justice (according to all the issue polls over the last several years)--had better find another name for ourselves, or, better yet, seize back our name and our revolutionary heritage by throwing Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

Then maybe we, too, can have a Leftist revolution (majority rule)!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=218212&mesg_id=218212

Strange - when Harper was leading in Canada, I don't remember headlines that said "Canada election could put rightist on US doorstep". Did I miss them?

You know they will try and cook something up to try turn this back in Calderon's favor.

awful lot of deaths then. Did it result in progress?

any specifics?

My knowledge of Mexico is limited. What I do know is that the ruler of Mexico at that time, Diaz I believe, had tight control over the wealth, media and people. There was to be an election, but Diaz jailed his opponent and the opponent fled to the US when released from prison. The people revolted and Diaz was out but the government was unstable for a long while afterward, due in part to US intervention.

So the goal was to get representative government, but what they got instead was unrest and US interference.

The Latin countries are turning to the left, and this will create even more * haters. Fox is every bit as bad as * in that he wants to keep his people hungry and poor while he rakes in the dollars. Good luck Left.

Leftist Lopez Obrador leads election race
By Alistair Bell in Mexico City

June 22, 2006 10:00

LEFTIST Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador edged further ahead in Mexico's tight presidential race, and investors' fears that he might cause economic chaos eased when authorities announced a debt deal.

A new opinion poll, the third this week, showed Mr Lopez Obrador increasing his lead over conservative rival Felipe Calderon ahead of the July 2 election.

While still a close race, the Milenio poll gave anti-poverty crusader Mr Lopez Obrador 35 per cent support, ahead Mr Calderon's 30 per cent. Mr Lopez Obrador's lead had increased from 3 percentage points in a survey two weeks ago.
(snip)

As he senses power, Mr Lopez Obrador has gone out of his way to counter critics' claims that he would overspend and take Mexico back to bad old days of currency devaluation, capital flight and mass bankruptcies of the 1980s and 1990s.
(snip/...)

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21498,19562374-950,00.html

David Hendricks: López Obrador does have a point on trade

Web Posted: 06/22/2006 12:00 AM CDT

San Antonio Express-News

Mexico presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador delivered a huge signal last weekend about the direction U.S.-Mexico relations would go if he wins the July 2 election.

In a word: confrontation.

López Obrador told Chiapas farmers he would not honor the North American Free Trade Agreement's final phase-out of agricultural tariffs in 2008.

The tariffs to expire that year include those for white corn and beans. Those products are one step away from tortillas and frijoles, the basic diet of Mexico's poor and critical crops for Mexico's small and subsistence-scale farmers, especially those in the southern states.

Protecting these farmers does not sound like an idle campaign promise by López Obrador, who appears to have the momentum in polls during the final days before the election. A López Obrador government would have a valid case if the often-protective United States disputed such a NAFTA violation.
(snip)

As much economic good that NAFTA achieved in the industrial and commercial arenas, the United States has not played fair with Mexico in much of the agricultural sector, nor with the rest of the world. Agricultural displacement in Mexico partially explains why migration has been so strong in recent years.
(snip/...)

http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA062206.1E.BIZ.COLhendricks.mexico.db38d2.html