Lopez Obrador supporters disrupt legislative session
MEXICO CITY – Fistfights and shoving matches broke out in the Mexican Congress Tuesday after leftist lawmakers, hoping to block the inauguration of conservative President-elect Felipe Calderon, stormed the podium and tried to seize control of the chamber.
Conservatives, surrounded by security guards, pushed back the protesting lawmakers and vowed to keep order until they formally bestow the presidential sash on Calderon in a ceremony Friday in the Chamber of Deputies.
The fisticuffs underscore the deep well of bitterness that remains after the closest and most hotly contested presidential race in modern Mexican history. Members of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, claim Calderon, a member of the National Action Party, or PAN, stole the July election.
“We’re not going to allow this inauguration to happen,” said Roberto Lopez, a PRD spokesman. “Felipe Calderon will not govern a single day in this country.”
Calderon’s transition office declined comment.
But Ruben Aguilar, a spokesman for outgoing President Vicente Fox, said Calderon will take over on Friday no matter what happens in Congress.
“There is an institutional mechanism” for it, he said. “After the first second on the first day of December of this year, we will have a president who was elected by the majority of the citizens of this country.”
Though PRD militants had made no secret of their plans to seize the podium to prevent Calderon’s inauguration, the clashes inside the chamber were sudden and unexpected. Both sides blamed each other for inflaming tensions, and neither had abandoned positions inside the chamber as night fell.
In September, PRD militants seized the podium and forced Fox to deliver his final state of the nation address on television.
Calderon won the July elections by less than 1 percentage point over populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who claimed widespread fraud and never conceded, even after the nation’s highest electoral court pronounced Calderon the victor in September. For weeks his followers camped out in downtown Mexico City, snarling traffic and shuttering shops.
Last week, Lopez Obrador declared himself the “legitimate president” of Mexico, strapped on his own presidential sash and began making plans for a “parallel” government. His supporters plan a massive protest in Mexico City’s central square, or Zocalo, to coincide with the inauguration Friday.
Calderon has promised to reach out to those who didn’t support him. But critics on the left say his Cabinet picks suggest otherwise. On Tuesday, he announced that former Jalisco Gov. Francisco Ramirez Acuna, criticized for his hard-line approach in dealing with street protests, would be his new interior secretary, handling domestic security.