Mexico's Most Toxic Presidential Race Ever

Splattered as it is with libelous calumnies, dark threats, smarmy insinuation, and stridently accusatory television spots, the run-up to the July 2 elections here constitutes the most toxic presidential race of the five this reporter has covered during decades on the ground in Mexico.

Indeed, both the campaigns of once-upon-a-time ruling PRI party candidate Roberto Madrazo and the right-wing PAN's Felipe Calderon boil down to one theme: everything and anything against frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the former mayor of Mexico City and the standard bearer for the pseudo-leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) who has led the pack by as much as 18 points ever since 2003 mid-term elections. AMLO's lead has held steady around eight for months.

The bi-partisan anti-AMLO assault is an extension of PRI-PAN complicity to eliminate Lopez Obrador from the competition by hook or by crook. The onslaught began in early 2004 with the release of incriminating videotapes showing members of the PRD receiving cash payouts from a construction tycoon whom AMLO had denied city contracts. Lopez Obrador would later tie the release of the videos (which were aired ad nauseam on Mexico's two-headed television monopoly Televisa and TV Azteca) to ex-president Carlos Salinas, a personal nemesis in AMLO's mindset akin to Sherlock Holmes' great foe, Prof. Moriarty.

More
http://counterpunch.org/ross04062006.html