Swearing-in a crucial test for Calderón

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s drug cartels are killing record numbers of people with unprecedented brutality. Federal security forces are bogged down in a violent political conflict in the southern city of Oaxaca. Years of sluggish economic growth cannot meet the needs of a country where over half the population lives in poverty.

The problems clamoring for the attention of Mexico’s new president are many, varied, and daunting. But no challenge is more pressing for conservative President-elect Felipe Calderón than his need today to get himself sworn in before Congress with a modicum of decorum.

As the dignitaries arrive from around the world — former president George H.W. Bush is to lead the US delegation — today’s formal ceremony is threatening to be a showcase of how volatile Mexican politics has become, rather than the traditional celebration of presidential power it was designed to be.

Calderón’s problem is that the left wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, the PRD, has vowed to sabotage the event. The party claims he stole victory in July’s presidential election from the PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The already bubbling tension in the buildup to the inauguration exploded in Congress on Tuesday. Deputies from the PRD and Calderón’s National Action Party, the PAN, scrambled for control of the speaker’s platform from where the oath of office is due to be taken, pushing, kicking, and punching one another in the process.

The brawl left each camp in charge of part of the platform and promising to stay put — the PRD aiming to block Calderón’s access to the podium, the PAN to keep a route open for him. Negotiations aimed at finding a way out of the standoff were underway yesterday with the PRD initially insisting it would not budge and the PAN apparently keen to avoid either the humiliation of having to change the venue or the controversy of calling in the security forces.

Adding to the pressure, López Obrador has called on his supporters to rally in the capital’s great Zócalo plaza in what could turn into a march on the Congress.

‘‘This is a symbolic political showdown,’’ said Oscar Aguilar, a political science professor at Mexico City’s Iberoamerican University, ‘‘a test of who has’’ the most nerve.

The PRD appears split over how much chaos it wants to create.

More moderate factions seem content with the idea of forcing Calderón into the embarrassing position of, for example, having to hold his swearing in ceremony in a corridor, or requiring the protection of the security forces. However, within the radical wing, the part more closely tied to López Obrador, there is talk of triggering a constitutional crisis and forcing the naming of an interim president. The constitution requires the Congress to do this if the president-elect does not turn up to take his oath of office.

To make himself perceived as being in charge, Calderón took over Mexico’s presidential residence in an unusual midnight ceremony today. He also swore in some staff.

‘‘I have received the presidential offices from President Vicente Fox, the start of the process of taking possession of the presidency,’’ Calderón said in a live broadcast. ‘‘Later, I will appear before Congress to take the constitutional oath.’’

‘‘He does not want to be seen giving up territory to the PRD,’’ says Alfonso Zárate, founder of the Mexico City based Interdisciplinary Consultation Group. ‘‘He wants to show that from the very start of his government he is not at all like Vicente Fox.’’

Fox, who is also from the PAN, leaves office with a reputation for avoiding delicate political situations, and as a result has been blamed for letting problems escalate to crisis point. He did not, for example, even attempt to enter the congressional chamber to give his final State of the Nation Address on Sept. 1 because the podium was occupied by the PRD in what has proved to be a kind of dress rehearsal for current events.

And there are signs that a penchant for political hardball could become a signature of Calderón’s administration in its early days.

The impression stems primarily from his appointment of Francisco Ramírez Acuña as interior minister.

The former governor of Jalisco State gained a hard-line reputation for crushing antiglobalization protests during an international summit in 2004. His appointment has worried local and international human rights groups who allege he tolerated police brutality.

The first indication of how hard Ramírez Acuña really is will come when he decides how to handle the conflict in Oaxaca between radical left-wing groups and a deeply unpopular governor that has engulfed the city.

There are few other clear signs yet of how Calderón will put his stamp on the other major issues threatening Mexico’s stability, such as the power of organized crime, which has killed over 2,000 this year. His public security appointments draw on several officials already in top positions.

Meanwhile, although Calderón’s economic appointments are trusted to maintain macroeconomic stability, there is little consensus on their chances of accelerating growth to a rate capable of dissuading hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from heading to the United States each year.

But what is clear is that whatever Calderón does, López Obrador will always be on the lookout for opportunities to protest.

The charismatic leftist was ‘‘inaugurated’’ as the country’s ‘‘legitimate president’’ on Nov. 20, the anniversary of the Mexican revolution, in a theatrical ceremony before well over 100,000 people in the Zócalo. He told the crowd, ‘‘We are going to make Calderón realize at all times that he is an illegitimate leader.’’

Although his radicalization has lost him support in the past few months, López Obrador nevertheless retains a hard-core base of support that a recent poll in the El Universal newspaper put at 26 percent. Not enough to win another election, but enough to be an important problem for the new president.

But for the moment, however, Calderón’s first task is to salvage something today.

‘‘If he can manage to make it reasonable, even if there is a lot of noise, he will be enormously strengthened,’’ says Luis Rubio, director general for the Mexico City-based Center for Research and Development. ‘‘If not, it could be very bad for him.’’

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.