Guerrero: Kevin de León’s bid for sympathy digs a deeper hole for his country
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has long maintained that he wants a new government that will be loyal to him. That is why he has been waiting for weeks to see if the next president would be someone such as former governor of Chihuahua, Mexico’s No. 1 job in the world, who is admired by most Mexicans and who the leader of a country where the majority vote with him every election.
President Calderon may have lost the election in the spring, but many Mexicans have not, nor have they ever will.
Since the election, his popularity has sunk to an all-time low, as evidenced by the recent surge in the popularity of the former governor of Chihuahua, who many Mexicans view as a puppet for Enrique Pena Nieto (PN), Calderon’s party’s presidential candidate.
No, this is not a case of mistaken identity. And I’m not talking about the governor of the state’s former rival, the state of Coahuila. I’m talking about the current governor of the state of Chihuahua, who is the first person to run for president of Mexico as a centrist and is viewed as a friend by many Mexicans.
This is not a case of bad timing — like the election of a U.S. president or presidential candidate who is also from a neighboring country. This is a case of not being selected by the people.
The selection of Kevin de León — a non-party politician from Chihuahua who is a strong leader of the Christian faith — by Pena Nieto is the result of pure calculation. To put it in the vernacular of U.S. elections: When you run against the person that the majority of your people support, the majority’s interests take a back seat to the interests of those in power.
To the extent that Mexican voters chose to turn away from the party that held them in thrall for the last three election cycles, they have done so because they chose to put power, and power alone, ahead of the interests of the majority. Of course