Mexican Congress Votes 360 to 127 to Stop Candidate Obrador

The "case" against López Obrador goes back many years, to at least three preceding administrations in Mexico City. Here is a summary:

A private hospital was built in the (fast developing) Santa Fe neighborhood of Mexico City (an area on the outskirts of the city that has seen many shopping malls pop up since NAFTA came into effect 11 years ago). The hospital wanted an access road.

One day before López Obrador became governor in December 2000, a lawsuit was filed against the city by someone - his name is Federico Escobedo - claiming to own the 200 square meter parcel slated for the access road.

As I reported here on February 24th, Escobedo's ownership of the plot of land is one of the issues in contention:

Fox’s calls for law and order, however, were further belied this week by the unearthing of more hard data on the case of the hospital road in the Santa Fe neighborhood of Mexico City that would be the pretext for the desafuero. To repeat the basic facts: All of this tumult extends from an administrative dispute, in which the supposed “owner” of a piece of land named “El Encino” that the Mexico City government took to widen a road to a hospital claimed that the City had violated his rights, and the law, in the eminent domain procedures.

It turns out that the “owner,” according to El Universal, is not the only person claiming title to the land, and that he has been to prison twice, once for fraud in a governmental position, and a second time for tax evasion.

El Universal said of a City government document on the case:

“The document outlined that Federico Escobedo, supposed owner of ‘El Encino,’ has twice been to prison. The first time was for a fraud of more than seven million pesos in (the public housing program) INFONAVIT in 1993, and the second time for tax evasion, in 1995.

“‘This is the person who says he is owner of the property, although he’s not the only one who claims it. At least two other people claim ownership of this land in the Santa Fe neighborhood,’ the document stated.”

Fox and Creel and the other desafuero-plotters are now, stuck with a “poster boy” for “respect for institutions” that is anything but one...

So López Obrador inherits a problem (one of many) from previous administrations. A 200 meter (roughly 66 feet by 33 feet) plot is hardly a matter on the front burner for any city of 12 million people.

Anyway, in March 2001 a judge rules on behalf of Escobedo, the plaintiff, and orders the city to cease construction of the access road.

In August 2001, the same judge, noting that the construction company (although it did not continue construction) still had equipment on the parcel and thus blocked the owner's use of it, and he asked the attorney general to charge various city officials, including the governor, with contempt of court ("abuse of power" in Mexican legal terminology) for disobeying his order.

Fox's Attorney General Macedo de la Concha then waits four years before doing anything. The whole thing was a trap from the get-go: If he had asked congress to strip López Obrador's immunity and right to run for office back in 2001, the matter would have already been litigated and López Obrador would be a presidential candidate already.

But the son of a bitch waited until last summer to request this of Congress, thus assuring that not enough time would be available for López Obrador to mount and win his defense on the contempt of court charge before the 2006 elections.

Another irregularity: the Attorney General didn't seek charges against any of the city officials directly involved with the case, only against the Governor (who has not been found to have signed any piece of paper involving this piece of land and, obviously, was quite busy with the larger matters of governing the hemisphere's largest city).

But here's the clincher: The problem was solved by early 2002, when the city completed a different access road to the hospital and the construction company finally took its equipment off the original 200 meter parcel. The "problem" (if there ever was a problem) for the supposed land owner ended by January 2002.

But the Fox administration waited, for 12 months of 2002, for 12 months of 2003, and for another seven months of 2004, before requesting the desafuero against López Obrador.

To my observations, this is proof positive of the political nature of this trumped-up charge. The problem was solved long ago, the city never built the access road and the construction company got off it 40 months ago. But the Fox regime waited, cynically, all this time to spring the "desafuero" close enough to the 2006 election in order to derail the most popular candidate from being able to run for president.

Finally, there is also the grave matter of unequal application of the law. Almost every governor, president, and bureaucrat leading an executive office has, at one time or another in this country, ignored a court order (this is done all the time in the United States, too, by the way). As with the hospital access road case, there are often appeals and conflicting versions of a story and officials wait for the next highest court to rule before acting.

As these documents posted below a February 28 La Jornada story show, both Attorney General Macedo and President Vicente Fox are guilty of the same "crime" for which they crucify López Obrador: violating court orders place upon them by name.

So all their talk about "ending impunity" and "a state of law" is bullshit. If the Mexico City governor is a criminal, by that standard, then so are they. And there you have it: unequal application of the law, in order to carry out a political agenda. That is what makes this, indeed, a coup d'etat.