Mexico takes stock of Fox's presidential legacy

MEXICO CITY -- In the early hours of July 3, 2000, Vicente Fox stood before a jubilant crowd that had gathered to cheer his victory at Mexico City's gilded Angel of Independence monument.

``Today, Mexico is different," the president-elect proclaimed. ``Today, Mexico enters the 21st century."

The election secured Fox's place in history for having ended 71 years of political domination of Mexico by the Institutional Revolutionary Party . But as he prepares to leave office, Fox is likely to be remembered more for what he achieved in his victorious election campaign than for anything he achieved in six years in power.

``Fox has two great qualities," said Carlos Monsivais, one of Mexico's foremost writers. ``The fact that he won, and the fact that he is finally going."

Most analysts and Mexican citizens are kinder to Fox, 63, who is barred by law from seeking another term in the July 2 election. Many even praise his presidency in comparison to those of his predecessors.

The tributes tend to focus on Fox having kept the economy away from the kind of crises that periodically rocked it in the past, for largely respecting the limitations on his power in relation to other governing institutions, and accepting press freedom and improving access to government information.

But even members of his center-right National Action Party do not dispute that Fox could not live up to the expectations he created in 2000. During the campaign he promised, among other things, 7 percent annual economic growth, 1 million new jobs a year, zero corruption, and quick resolution of the armed conflict in the southern state of Chiapas.

Fox's ineffectiveness in government is clearest in the disastrous relationship he developed from the start with the legislature, in which the Institutional Revolutionary Party is the largest . As the head of a minority government, those relations were always going to be tricky, but Fox's critics insist that a little political savvy could have gone a long way. They argue that he could have tried to divide the wounded Institutional Revolutionary Party, or negotiated compromises with the former ruling party.

Instead, the opposition blocked almost every Fox initiative, and his agenda for political and fiscal reform, energy sector liberalization, and labor code modernization went nowhere. The president, once so blessed with determination and unassailable self-confidence, seemed to stand back and watch as campaign promise after promise was written off, according to many analysts.

Fox is credited with consolidating economic stability, reducing poverty by expanding social programs, and engineering a credit boom for housing and consumer durables. But economists insist that the lack of reforms designed to increase government revenue and encourage private investment condemned Mexico to levels of economic growth and job creation far below the pledges Fox had made.

Jorge Castañeda, a renowned academic who served as Fox's foreign minister in the early years, said Fox was rendered helpless in most areas because of the central failure of not pushing through an overhaul of the political and judicial institutions created by the former ruling party.

``He was a victim of lousy and obsolete institutions," said Castañeda . ``These may have worked for an authoritarian regime, but they are useless in a democracy."

In the meantime, the constant warring with Congress took a personal toll on the president. With every new battle, he seemed to shrink just a little more, ending his term a much diminished figure from the candidate who thumped his hand on the table and demanded change in Mexico ``today, today, today."

At his final annual address to the legislature in September, Fox was periodically shouted down by opposition deputies.

His performance on human rights also came under fire.

In a report titled ``Lost in Transition," the US-based group Human Rights Watch hailed Mexico's new freedom of information law opening up federal government to scrutiny, and the decision to make public archives detailing past repression of dissidents. But the group's director for the Americas, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said: ``The country's chronic human rights problems, such as the widespread use of torture to gain confessions, remain largely unchanged."

Mexico garnered respect across the world for its role in ensuring that the UN Security Council did not endorse President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, but Fox's kudos in Latin America took a knock with a series of scraps with regional leaders.

While the administration helped to put immigration at the center of Mexico's bilateral relationship with the United States, there is little evidence that Fox or his foreign ministers have had much success pushing that agenda forward. There also was a highly embarrassing statement by the Fox in which he tried to underline how hard-working Mexican migrants are with the phrase: ``They do jobs even the blacks won't."

The most emotionally charged accusations leveled at Fox question his commitment to the democratic transition he engineered.

The questions first were raised by the media when he endorsed the ultimately unsuccessful presidential ambitions of his wife, Marta Sahagun. Fox's refusal to rein in Sahagun's political activism and personal promotion was a particularly controversial theme for much of his term.

But analysts say the most serious dent to Fox's democratic credentials came with his clumsy attempt to clip the presidential hopes of Mexico City's left-wing mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, by seeking his impeachment over a minor planning dispute.

Two weeks before the presidential vote, polls show Lopez Obrador in a close race with conservative free-market candidate Felipe Calderon from Fox's party.