Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office a year ago under inauspicious circumstances--emerging with a bare plurality in a bitter three-way race, accused of stealing the election, facing paralysis in the national capital as supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took to the streets.
Today, at least one poll has his approval rating over 60 percent. The apparent seriousness of his war on drug cartels, and his relatively quick response to the catastrophic floods in Tabasco, are winning over many people, it seems. He has five more years to consolidate these gains.
A full six years of good government could get Mexico out of two centuries of malaise and on the road to a real, functioning, prosperous democratic country. Think it can't be done? Spain did it, overcoming an equally bleak legacy that not so long ago, seemed to doom that country to near third-world status.
Read an English report on Calderon's one-year anniversary speech here.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
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