Charges won't end Mexico City mayor's candidacy

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's government said yesterday it would ensure criminal charges won't keep the capital's popular mayor out of next year's presidential race, helping to defuse a political battle that cost President Vicente Fox an attorney general and raised concerns he was using his office to go after rivals.

Fox's spokesman Ruben Aguilar said at a news conference that prosecutors would not drop abuse of power charges against Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but would make sure that he is allowed to campaign while the case against him moves forward.

''The solution that has to be found in a judicial way -- and it will be a challenge for the new attorney general -- is to allow other eyes to analyze the files and find routes so that no case keeps Mr. Lopez Obrador" out of the presidential race, Aguilar said.

In a surprise announcement Wednesday night, Fox said he was accepting the resignation of Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, whose office had sought to prosecute Lopez Obrador.

Congress stripped the mayor of his immunity from prosecution to face charges that he failed to obey a judge's order to stop building a hospital access road on private land.

Lopez Obrador has said from the beginning that Fox's administration was pursuing the charges to keep him out of the race.

''I have always maintained that the impeachment is a political matter and not judicial," he said yesterday. ''That is how the majority of Mexicans see it."

Fox, who has denied those allegations, can't run for a second term and Lopez Obrador, a fiery, left-leaning politician, leads most polls to replace him in elections next year.

''We have cleared away the dark clouds, the uncertainty and we are ensuring that the electoral process of 2006 will be absolutely legal," the president said.

Under most interpretations of Mexican law, anyone facing criminal charges cannot run for office. Lopez Obrador has argued that the law only bans those who have been convicted. If prosecutors now subscribe to that theory, they could continue to pursue charges against the mayor without interrupting his bid for the presidency.

''There's a lot of possibilities, legal options," Aguilar said.

Presidential counsel Daniel Cabeza de Vaca will temporarily replace Macedo de la Concha until Fox names a new attorney general.

Macedo de la Concha's departure is a clear retreat in Fox's battle with Lopez Obrador, and most observers say it is only a matter of time before the criminal case against the mayor evaporates completely.

Far from hurting Lopez Obrador, the criminal case has made him more popular with many Mexicans who think the charges against him were unfair.