Monday, February 2, 2004

 

Scandal rocks Mexico City and its ambitious mayor

 

By Carlos Luken

 

Call it a sign of the times, call it retribution or simply call it politics — Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is getting a bitter taste of what being a favorite is all about. This is largely because he is seen as a likely successor to the presidency of Mexico in 2006.

 

Lopez Obrador, a shrewd politician who lost the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) gubernatorial candidacy in his native Tabasco in the late 1980s, thus left the PRI in a huff and joined a leftist coalition. That group was the founding core of today’s Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), and as its candidate Lopez Obrador easily won the mayoral race in Mexico City in 2000.

 

Upon taking office, and recognizing that his high-visibility post could carry him to the presidency, Lopez Obrador launched a populism campaign that targeted Mexico City’s disenfranchised groups. In doing so, and despite gathering massive budget deficits, the mayor’s style gained him strong support among the capital’s millions of poor and elderly.

 

The publicity seeking antics of Lopez Obrador have gone from living in a small apartment and starting each work day with a 6:00 a.m. press conference, to giving free milk to the poor and monthly checks to the elderly. He also launched an austerity program that included abandoning his luxury vehicle, replacing it with a much heralded compact economy car.

 

With all of this, and despite leading in most public opinion polls, the mayor was able to keep a distance from the presidential race. And by doing so he avoided getting caught in the current presidential candidate pushing and shoving, that in days gone by surfaced during the final year of a serving president’s term.

 

But times have changed. Since the 2000 triumph of Vicente Fox the self-candidacy environment in Mexico has spawned a contagious air of competition. An atmosphere that makes many politicians think they now can effectively contend, and while doing so the challengers are lashing out against all rivals.

 

As would be expected, this also makes the Mexico City mayor a sure target. As well, he has now given the nation a bull’s-eye — a genuine scandal and public outrage that is being fiercely criticized.

 

“Nicogate,” as the scandal is being called, exploded in Lopez Obrador’s face with considerable force and it has exposed his austerity program as largely false.  It was discovered that Nicolas (“Nico”) Mollinedo, a Lopez Obrador friend who also works as the mayor’s chauffer, was earning a monthly salary of nearly US$6,000.00 — dollars! This is a huge salary, considering that Mollinedo was receiving roughly 15 times more than other city chauffeurs, and about the same wage as top administration executives.

 

Considering the charges and allegations, an investigation was promptly launched.

 

In answering accusations, Lopez Obrador has said that Mollinedo should be seen as a logistical coordinator who organizes events and security details, a confidant who manages communications and works as the administrator of a staff of 40 people. Moreover, he mockingly states “he also drives me where I want to go.”

 

Lopez Obrador insists that the growing charges of nepotism, cronyism and corruption in his administration are unfounded, plus he blames the criticism by others on his rising numbers in the polls.

 

Since the scandalous “Nicogate” news broke Lopez Obrador has repeatedly been asked for comments on the mounting charges, and related stories have run daily. This has also forced Lopez Obrador to finally acknowledge that he is the prime 2006 presidential candidate — along with giving him a forum to spin blame for criticism to politics and opposition instigators who, so he says, are on a crusade to disgrace him.

 

But many of his comments are being viewed as hypocritical and received with suspicion.

 

Even Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the PRD’s foremost luminary (who is also a probable contender for the party’s presidential candidate nomination) and a Lopez Obrador predecessor as mayor of Mexico City, has commented on the inconsistency of the austerity program and the chauffeur’s salary. In doing so, and apart from his political motives, Cardenas left little doubt that a rift was developing.

 

Regardless of what he may say, “Nicogate” has brought Lopez Obrador out of the cold and into the heat of the race. But it has also damaged his image and credibility, by exposing his populist and so-called austerity programs as political ploys. And the scandal has landed him smack-dab in the middle of the group of politicians from whom he had been trying so hard to distance himself.

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Carlos Luken (a www.mexidata.info columnist), a Mexicali, Baja California, based businessman, is the principal in I.L.C. Corporate Real Estate, a project development firm, and I.L.C. Corporate Services, a consulting practice that provides business management, consultancy and lobbying services to global corporations and government agencies. He can be reached via e-mail at ilc@computec.com.mx.