Narrator: |
[foreign
language] |
|
In
his eight years one political party has held power in Mexico. It's ruled all
his parents' lives and all his grandparents lives. But tonight it seems as
though the whole town is here to pay tribute to the man they believe can
change all that. |
|
Vicente
Fox, the man who wants to be the champion of the peasants and Mexico's ruling
class alike. He's already given the country something it's hardly ever had
before, a campaign where the result is genuinely in doubt. |
Vicente
Fox: |
Every
day I wake up in the morning, and the first question I ask myself is, where
am I? Question number two, what hell am I doing in politics? Because it's not
my vocation, it's not my project in life. I just want to continue to bring
change in Mexico. To contribute for Mexico to have a democracy. |
|
(singing) |
Narrator: |
Libertad
Street Mexico City. The cameras are rolling. The struggling families who live
here and the street kids have flags to wave. Vicente Fox wants to shore up
his city and show his compassion for Mexico's poor, all 40 million of them. |
Vicente
Fox: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
He's
also trying to persuade the people that it really is safe to ditch a regime
that's being called Latin America's perfect dictatorship, The Institutional
Revolutionary Party the PRI. |
Vicente
Fox: |
We
have to profiles of electorate. One is the better educated, the more
reflective, those who have wealth and of course they want everything very
civilised, no violence, and they don't care too much about whether democracy
hits Mexico the second of July of this year, or six years later or 12 years
later. And there is the poor, those who suffer, those who are unemployed, who
say it has to be today. No more tomorrows. This is the country of tomorrow we
need solutions today. |
Narrator: |
Ironically
it's the people Vicente Fox don't care so much about when change hits Mexico
who are flocking to him. The urban rich and middle class are being drawn to
the former Coca-Cola executives glitzy campaign. |
Speaker
3: |
[foreign
language]. |
Narrator: |
A
pitch that's seen a small right of centre opposition party grow into a
movement to threaten a regime that's lasted 71 years. |
|
But
his support in the city though impressive won't be enough, which is why the
candidate and his adopted daughter are heading out of town and into the
stronghold of the PRI. |
|
Vicente
Fox is going north, promising to end party corruption and to confront those
who've thrived under it. |
|
How
can Vicente Fox make a difference against the Mexican drug lords where others
have failed? |
Vicente
Fox: |
Well
because I am clean, I am transparent, I am honest. I have not commitments, no
political commitments. The problem of narco traffic
has been built up in Mexico through participation of the same authority and
same government, at least some people within it. |
Narrator: |
He's
taking on a system of official patronage that has flourished under the PRI,
and that in rural Mexico has become a way of life. |
Vicente
Fox: |
It's
been a long struggle and fight. Three years of our campaign, we've done our
homework. People is waking up, so we will win July the second. |
Narrator: |
But
in fact that isn't what the morning newspaper headlines at his own polling
are saying. They're telling him the three is keeping hold of the people who
have always been its most loyal followers. |
|
He
leads in the cities by 12 points but he trials in the country by 20. |
|
(singing) |
|
Beneath
the mountains of [inaudible] a 70 year old peasant is singing me a song he's
written for the PRI. It's his tribute, a sign of his loyalty. As long as he's
been alive the party has been provider. Don [Pancho]
belongs to the union of workers and peasants who follow the PRI. |
|
After
all this time the party is virtually indistinguishable from the state. |
Don
Pancho: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
Don
Pancho and his wife have been promised that if they
vote for the PRI they'll be given a present. |
Don
Pancho: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
He
says he doesn't like it but he'll accept it anyway. |
Don
Pancho: |
[foreign
language] |
Vicente
Fox: |
PRIs
profile of voter is the poor and the poor of the poor, is the least educated,
and is the eldest, and they account for 37% of vote. Now you can see there
that the votes they get, they take them up from ignorance or they take them
up for hunger. And many the people in Mexico don't have enough food to eat
every day. |
|
[foreign
language]. |
Narrator: |
His
campaign team is doing what it can, the message pretty simple. Mexicans are
told to accept whatever they're offered, but to vote for Fox anyway. |
|
And
the candidate who swapped his city suit for a cowboy hat to remind the people
that he was born in the country. |
Vicente
Fox: |
I
shared the toys with the poor kid's from [inaudible]. Those kids that were
friends of mine, today they are still my friends. |
Narrator: |
Another
tactic is simply to stand out. And at 1.9 metres tall in his cowboy boots,
Vicente Fox does. |
|
His
sometimes erratic campaign style has seen he dubbed the Bronco. Though he
cultivates an anti politician image, the 57 year
old has invited the cameras home to meet his mother. Taking them on a guided
tour of the ranch where he grew up. A devout Catholic he talks of his Jesuit
upbringing. |
Vicente
Fox: |
The
philosophy of their teaching is that you find your own personal realisation
or accomplishment through serving others, through being for others for thy
neighbour, and that's again one of my philosophies in life. |
Narrator: |
Vicente
Fox does just about anything he can think of in public that the ruling party
candidate wouldn't do. That includes speaking bluntly, and resorting to
personal attacks, something else new for Mexico. He likes to call his PRI
rival Shorty. |
Vicente
Fox: |
He
need a little bench for the debate. I just wanted to make him mad. It's being
myself. Sometimes I use dirty words, which we all use. I just wanted to be
very citizen like. Speak the very simple language that citizens speak. I
think in Mexico we all reject this sophisticated language of politicians, so
I try to be myself all the time. |
Narrator: |
But
the ruling party candidate is also exhibiting the common touch. Former
interior Minister Francisco Labastida says he represents the new PRI. He's
apologised for past corruption, and his government has gone to extravagant
lengths to prove that this election will be clean. Spending $3 billion of
public money on a new supposedly temper voting system. Even if many people
find it all a bit much to believe. |
|
In
one of the world's biggest cities life has always been hard. Mexico City is
violent and polluted and dirt poor Mexicans are still streaming in from the
countryside. Three years ago with the soaring crime rate and protest snarling
the streets, the PRI surrendered control of the metropolis to an elected
official for the first time. Hundreds of police and other law enforcement
agents were arrested on corruption charges. |
Rosario
Robles: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
A
normal day at the office for mayor Rosario Robles, chaos. The crusade to
clean up after the PRI is front page news, even if all she's doing today is
checking on the progress of a new rail line, and she isn't buying Labastida's
new PRI. |
Rosario
Robles: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
In
the city there have been complaints of public servants being coerced into
supporting. |
Rosario
Robles: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
For
people who have nothing else, selling a voter ID card is hardly a difficult
choice. This is the poorest part of Cuernavaca. A town that's an hours drive out of Mexico City. Hundreds of families eke
out an existence along an abandoned railway track. I have been here by
Modesto Gonzales, a nurse who's been tending to the children for years. She
wants me to meet a former patient, Patty. |
|
Patty's
home an abandoned railway carriage has burnt down, she's desperate for money
and PRI officials who've been here offering to buy voter ID cards. |
Patty: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
She
says dozens in the community were approached, but they won't talk to us
because everybody fears retaliation. |
Patty: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
Modesto
has a story of her own. Her son she says was approached by a PRI deputy and
promised a scholarship if he made copies of the ID cards of 10 of his
friends. |
Modesto
Gonzale: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
For
international monitors here to observe the election, the new PRI is turning
out to be not so new after all. |
Speaker
9: |
That's
the way it happens in most of Latin America, voted buying. There's a very
narrow grey line between deserving votes and buying them. If you offer a
bridge are you buying a vote, or if you offer a T-shirt are buying a vote. If
you offer money certainly you are, and that's illegal. But there are some
grey areas. |
Narrator: |
Vicente
Fox is becoming an expert on grey areas, he needs to be. |
|
[foreign
language] |
|
The
citizens group he set up to watch the PRI is delivering another of its
regular briefings. |
|
[foreign
language] |
|
Things
are better than the old days, but the old days weren't so long ago. He says
in the presidential race of 1998, the ruling party resorted to stuffing
ballot boxes. |
Vicente
Fox: |
At
eight o'clock in the morning before the places to vote were open all the
boxes were already filled up with votes. We people have to take them out, put
them up on the street on a pile and fire them up. |
Narrator: |
On
July 2, his volunteers will be watching more than 100,000 polling booths. |
Vicente
Fox: |
On
election day through all these irregularities, immoralities and illegalities
they will erode our vote at least by 3 to 5%. |
|
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
An
ID check to gain admittance to the compound of a PRI patriarch, a party
veteran of 50 years. Who says claims of voter cards being bought or copied
are lies. |
Speaker
10: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
John
Louis [inaudible]. |
Speaker
10: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
We've
spoken with other people who tell us that they've been promised food, rations
if they vote for the PRI. |
Speaker
10: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
But
if it happens again and a tight race turns into a narrow victory for the PRI,
Vicente Fox isn't the kind of man to back down. |
Vicente
Fox: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
A
shoot from the hip style has brought worldwide attention, and he isn't
accustomed to losing. |
Vicente
Fox: |
Being
a candidate fighting for democracy you need that kind of a strength. Mandela
needed it in South Africa and all these leaders that had to fight a
dictatorship or a long term standing government need that kind of courage. |
Narrator: |
If
on July 3, you wake up and you haven't won the election, and you're convinced
that fraud of whatever variety has denied you that victory, what will you do? |
Vicente
Fox: |
Whatever
the people want. But we will do something about it no doubt. I don't decide
in advance. We will decide what to do then. |
|
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
His
country is nervous, in Mexico power is never surrendered easily. But on this
evening in Sonora, there is the unmistakable sense that win or lose time is
catching up with the PRI. |
Vicente
Fox: |
[foreign
language] |
Narrator: |
And
that Vicente Fox is tantalisingly close to making history. was the sense of. |