Mexico opposition may work with criminals -Calderon

Felipe Calderon

MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe  Calderon has said politicians in the main opposition party may  consider deals with criminals, opening an inflammatory new  front in the nation’s presidential election campaign.

Felipe Calderon

Calderon’s blunt remarks about the centrist Institutional  Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is favored to win the July 1,  2012 election, are unusual in a country where the president is  expected to stay largely aloof from party politics. Centering on the policy that has dominated his presidency  — an aggressive army-led crackdown on drug cartels — his  comments risk polarizing opinion on how to restore stability to  Mexico, where the drug war has killed 44,000 in five years.

Leading members of Calderon’s conservative National Action  Party (PAN), other PRI opponents and political analysts have  accused the once-dominant party of making secret deals with  drug cartels in the past to keep the peace in Mexico.

In a weekend New York Times interview published a day after  he said a state governed by the PRI had been left in the hands  of a drug gang, Calderon was asked whether the opposition party  might pursue a corrupt relationship with organized crime. “There are many in the PRI who think the deals of the past  would work now. I don’t see what deal could be done, but that  is the mentality many of them have,” said Calderon, whom the  law prevents from seeking a second six-year term.

Analysts say Calderon is bitterly opposed to the PRI, which  dominated Mexico for seven decades until the PAN won the  presidency in 2000 under its candidate Vicente Fox. The tide of drug war killings has eroded support for the  PAN, and the PRI’s main hopeful, the telegenic former governor  of the State of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, has around twice  the support of his nearest rival.
 NAMING NAMES    
The PRI has attacked Calderon for the spiraling death toll,  and analysts said the president’s remarks were tailored for the  election, putting in jeopardy any hope of passing many pending  reforms that have been stalled in Congress. “This is really serious,” Javier Oliva, a political  scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico  (UNAM), said of Calderon’s accusations against the PRI. “The  president has an obligation to prove this now. To name names.”