Felipe Calderon's Big Challenge

By Allan Wall
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 19, 2006

Mexico’s new president Felipe Calderon faces enormous challenges. In fact, just getting into the Mexican Congress building to take his inaugural oath was a challenge.

Opposition lawmakers, still smarting over Calderon’s razor-thin victory on July 2nd, had promised to physically prevent Calderon from taking his oath of office in the legislative chamber on December 1st, as required by Mexican law and custom.

This led to a bizarre confrontation on the chamber’s dais, as legislators from both the opposition PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and Calderon’s PAN (National Action Party) camped out on the platform for 72 hours, until December 1st, inauguration day, when a real donnybrook erupted on the chamber floor.

Nevertheless, Calderon entered the chamber, and amidst catcalls and cheers, took the oath of office. The deed had been done.

Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, deserves high marks for keeping the economy stable, with no peso crash or runaway inflation. And yet, the economy was a little too stable, as it lacked the dynamic growth that could provide enough jobs for the million Mexicans who enter the work force annually. The new president needs to preserve Fox’s good financial policies while enabling the expansion of more and better-paid jobs. Also, Mexico faces a growing crime wave, which includes drug cartel related violence which has claimed over 2,000 lives this year alone.

So far, the new president has hit the ground running, and seems in control of his agenda, which is quite ambitious; his three priorities being jobs, fighting poverty and fighting crime.