Mexico City: PRI and PRD take their last shot at President Vicente Fox

There exists an interesting law in Mexico, probably in the Constitution somewhere, that states that the president must apply to Mexico's Congress, both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, for permission to leave the country. I think it's been a law here since President Benito Juarez used to sneak across the border into Texas to play poker. This while his army battled foreign forces sent to recoup the billions owed to various crown heads of Europe. (That is a fact, incidentally, not that it has anything to do with the now extinct Double Whopper with Cheese in Oaxaca.)

When President Fox was newly elected, he ran into immediate trouble with this rule. The Congress threatened to deny him permission for his very first trip abroad as head of state. They backed off, ultimately. Fox was supposed to attend some international function or another and the Deputies were warned that Mexico would suffer grave embarrassment if Fox were a no-show.

In 2002, he planned a visit to the United States and Canada where, among other things, he was to have met with Bill Gates. That trip was denied him by the Senate because he, er, was to meet with Bill Gates. The Senate considered that Gates had just too much money to be sitting down with Mexico's president. Especially so in light of the fact that Fox had yet to sit down with Carlos Slim, whose fortune is estimated at 35 billion US eagles and from whose pocket 2/3 or so of the nation's congress receive succor.

Fox' last trip abroad was to have been to Australia and Viet Nam next week. The Chamber of Deputies has denied him permission to make the trip because Fox's daughter lives in Australia. The opposition decided that the trip was too "personal" in nature. Fox's office has blamed this latest, and probably last confrontation between Fox and the nation's useless Congress on "a partisan decision based on personal interests rather than the interests of all."

Well, that's what politics are all about, right? Most politicians, all politicians in Mexico, 99% of them in the US, base all of their actions on partisan criteria, not the good of their respective countries. Their decisions and actions are all made toward gaining political power, which results in having more control over the money, and not on any silly, unselfish, "for the good of all" principles.

Why is this man smiling? Because in about 3 weeks, "I'm outta here!"

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TAGS: Mexico City, Presidente Vicente Fox