Felipe Calderón

This article is about the current president of Mexico. For the Filipino politician and historical figure, see Felipe Calderón y Roca.

Felipe de Jesus Calderón Hinojosa
President of Mexico
Incumbent
Assumed office  December 1, 2006
Preceded by	Vicente Fox
Secretary of Energy
In office September, 2003 – June 1, 2004
Preceded by	Ernesto Martens
Succeeded by	Fernando Elizondo Barragán
16th President National Action Party (Mexico)
In office 1996 – 1999
Preceded by	Carlos Castillo Peraza
Succeeded by	Luis Felipe Bravo Mena
Born	August 18, 1962 (1962-08-18) (age 47)[1] Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico
Political party	National Action Party (PAN)
Spouse	Margarita Zavala
Alma mater	Escuela Libre de Derecho Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México Harvard University
Occupation	Politician
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Roman Catholic

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (born August 18, 1962 in Morelia, Michoacán) is the President of Mexico. He assumed office on December 1, 2006, and was elected for one six-year term that will end in 2012 without the possibility of re-election. He is affiliated with the National Action Party (PAN), a mostly conservative organization with a tendency toward more neoliberal economic ideas.

Calderón was elected in the contested 2006 presidential elections. The results were contested by opponent Andrés Manuel López Obrador but were finally validated on September 5, 2006 by the Federal Electoral Tribunal.

According to polls conducted by Grupo Reforma in July 2006 and June 2007, 36% of Mexicans still believed the election was fraudulent or that there were serious irregularities.^[2] In contrast, the same poll indicated that 54% of respondents considered that there was no fraud in the election.

Prior to the presidency, Calderón actively participated in PAN politics. He has served as National President of the Party, Federal Deputy, and Secretary of Energy in Vicente Fox's cabinet.

Background and family life

Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was born in Morelia, Michoacán. He is the youngest of five brothers and son of Carmen Hinojosa Calderón and the late Luis Calderón Vega.

His father was a co-founder of the National Action Party and an important political figure. He occupied state posts and served a term as federal deputy. Calderón spent most of his life working within the party and spent most of his free time promoting the PAN.

After growing up in Morelia, Calderón moved to Mexico City, where he received a bachelor's degree in law from the Escuela Libre de Derecho. Later on, he received a master's degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.^[3]

Following his father's example, he joined the PAN. His father had quit in 1981, claiming that it had deviated from its principles and its founders' objectives.

It was in the National Action Party where Calderón met his wife, Margarita Zavala, who served in Congress as a federal deputy. They have three children, María, Luis Felipe and Juan Pablo. Before becoming president of Mexico, he lived in the Colonia Las Aguilas, in southern-Mexico City.

Political career

Calderón was president of the PAN's youth movement in his early twenties

He was a local representative in the Legislative Assembly and, on two different occasions, in the federal Chamber of Deputies. He ran for the governorship of Michoacán in 1995 and served as national president of the PAN from 1996 to 1999. During his tenure, his party maintained control of 14 state capitals, but also lost presence in the federal Chamber of Deputies.

Soon after Vicente Fox took office as president, Calderón was appointed director of Banobras, a national development bank. Later on, he joined the presidential cabinet as Secretary of Energy, replacing Ernesto Martens. He left the post in May 2004 in protest of Vicente Fox's criticism of his presidential ambitions while supporting those of Santiago Creel.

2006 presidential campaign

Main article: Mexican general election, 2006

Members of his party chose him as the PAN presidential candidate in a series of three primary elections at the end of 2005. In these elections, he defeated former Interior Secretary Santiago Creel and former Governor of Jalisco Alberto Cárdenas by a comfortable margin.

Santiago Creel was said to be, at the time, the preferred candidate of President Vicente Fox, and thus the election of Calderón as party candidate surprised many analysts. The PAN pointed to this primary election as a signal of "internal democracy", contrasted by the election processes of the other parties. The PRD had only one pre-candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the PRI, while having a nationwide primary open to anyone, even non-party members, eliminated all strong candidates that opposed Roberto Madrazo. Indeed, the only pre-candidate that opposed Madrazo got less than 5% of the internal vote.

Calderón accepted his party's nomination on December 4, 2005. He began his campaign on January 1, 2006.

Calderón's campaign gained momentum after the first presidential debate. Subsequent poll numbers showed a steady increase in his popularity and put him ahead of López Obrador from March to May; some polls favored him by as much as nine percentage points. This trend ceased after the second presidential debate. Final poll numbers indicated a very close election; some gave López Obrador the lead, while others either favored Calderón or indicated a technical tie.

Political and social views

A devout Roman Catholic, Calderón opposes abortion, euthanasia, and gay marriage.^[4] His proposed economic policies are liberal; he supports balanced fiscal policies, flat taxes, lower taxes,^[5][6][7] and free trade.

Calderón has also stated that the challenge is not between the political left or right, but a choice between "the past and the future." In his interpretation, moving toward "the past" would mean nationalization, expropriation, state control of the economy, and authoritarianism, while "the future" would represent the contrary: privatization, liberalization, market control of the economy, and political freedom.^[8]

Criticism

Criticism of Calderón surfaced during the presidential campaign, some of it originating from the PRD, and also from columnists and editorialists. His performance as Banobras director, the Fobaproa rescue, and the Hildebrando case have all been subjects of criticism.

Banobras

Felipe Calderón has been accused by the PRD of illegally borrowing and later repaying about 3 Million Pesos (US $300,000) from Banobras, a state-owned development bank, during his tenure as the bank's director.^[9]

Fobaproa

Main article: Fobaproa

The Fobaproa was a government-sponsored financial rescue of the Mexican financial system, including many private banks, after the 1994 economic crisis, also known as "the December mistake". The Fobaproa is a controversial issue that supporters claim to have helped save the economy of Mexico and prevent a worsening of the crisis and that detractors claim to have been used for corruption.

During the presidential campaign of 2006, the PRD accused Felipe Calderón of "being complicit" in the Fobaproa, implying that the alleged crimes committed in its execution were orchestrated by Calderón. However, the Fobaproa was carried out by the executive branch, headed by then President Ernesto Zedillo of the PRI, while Felipe Calderón merely participated from the legislative branch by proposing an alternate financial system rescue project to that presented by the PRI (FOBAPROA).

It is notable that during those times, the legislative branch of government did not have the power it has today. Calderón voted for the adoption of the Fobaproa rescue package at that time, but did not sign the actual document, as his detractors once said.

Hildebrando

In the presidential candidate debate of June 6, 2006, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, presidential candidate for the PRD, accused Felipe Calderón of granting contracts to a software company named Hildebrando,^[10] which Calderón's brother-in-law, Diego Zavala, founded and in which he has minority stock, during Calderón's eight-month tenure as Secretary of Energy. Moreover, Hildebrando developed the vote counting system in the controversial presidential election of 2006. A group of UNAM mathematicians purported to show how the results published by the Federal Electoral Institute were artificially generated, as their statistical properties could not have been the outcome of a real vote count; this paper, however, has been quite controversial.^[11] López Obrador also accused the company of tax evasion. Investigations are still being conducted, without any outcome yet.^[12]

Post-election controversy

Main article: Mexican general election 2006 controversies

Felipe Calderón and Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada.

On July 2, 2006, the day of the election, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) announced that the race was too close to call and chose not to make public a large and well-designed exit poll. However, as the preliminary results of the unofficial PREP database made clear the next morning, Felipe Calderón had a small lead of 1.04%.^[13]

The IFE called the candidates to abstain from pronouncing themselves as winner, president-elect, or president. Both candidates disobeyed this call. Just after López Obrador declared that he had won the election, Calderón proclaimed victory as well, pointing to the initial figures released by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).^[14]

On July 6, 2006, the Federal Electoral Institute announced the official vote count in the 2006 presidential election, resulting in a narrow margin of 0.58% for Calderón over his closest contender, PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. However, López Obrador and his coalition alleged irregularities in a number of polling stations and demanded a national recount. Ultimately, the Federal Electoral Tribunal, in a unanimous vote, declared such recount to be groundless and unfeasible and ordered a recount of about 9.07% of the 130,477 polling stations.^[15]

On September 5, 2006, even when the Federal Electoral Tribunal admitted irregularities in the election, Calderón was, after the change of the votes of two of the magistrates,^[16] unanimously declared president-elect by the tribunal with a lead of 233,831 votes, or 0.56%, over López Obrador. The electoral court concluded that there were minor irregularities before and during the election, but these were not enough to invalidate the election. The ruling was mandatory, final, and could not be appealed.^[17]

A small sector of the population, including the mayor of Mexico City Marcelo Ebrard, still does not recognize Felipe Calderón as constitutional president.

Presidency

Inauguration

The PRD opposition had threatened to not allow Calderón to take the oath of office and be inaugurated as president. In a surprising move, the PAN took control of Congress's main floor three days before the inauguration was scheduled. This led to days of fist fighting on the congressional floor and uncertainty as to what would happen and whether Calderón would assume the presidency. The Mexican Constitution states that the President must be inaugurated by taking the oath of office before Congress in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

On November 30, 2006 at ten minutes to midnight, in an unprecedented move,^[18] outgoing President Vicente Fox Quesada and still President-Elect Felipe Calderón Hinojosa stood side by side on national television as Fox turned over the presidential band to a cadet, who handed it to Calderón. Afterwards, Fox read a short speech indicating that he had concluded his mandate by receiving the flag "that had accompanied him during the last six years which he had devoted himself completely to the service of Mexico and had the utmost honor of being the president of the republic".^[19] Then, Calderón read a speech to the people of Mexico, indicating that he would attend to the inauguration ceremony at the Chamber of Deputies. He made a call to unity using words from his presidential campaign. Though it was debated at the time whether the action had been constitutional, it gave Calderón the right of protection by the Presidential Guard, which proved crucial the following day.

On December 1, 2006 despite the PRD's plans to prevent Calderón from taking office, the inauguration in front of Congress was able to proceed. Hours before Calderón's arrival, lawmakers from the PRD and PAN parties began a brawl,^[20] where several representatives threw punches and pushed, while others shouted at each other. PRD representatives shouted "Fuera Fox" ("out with President Fox") and blew whistles, while PAN representatives responded back with "Mexico, Mexico." Minutes before Calderón and Fox walked into Congress, the president of the Chamber of Deputies announced legal quorum, thus enabling Calderón to legally take the oath of office. At 9:45 a.m. CST, all Mexican media cut to the official national broadcast, where commentators discussed the situation, and showed scenes inside the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies, Palacio de San Lázaro. At 9:50 a.m. CST, Calderón entered the chamber through a protected entrance in the back of the palace and approached the podium, where he took the oath as required by the Constitution.^[21] After the anthem, opposition continued to yell "Felipe will fall." PAN representatives shouted back, "Sí se pudo" (It was possible).^[22][23] Calderón stood in Congress for less than five minutes and walked out. At 10:00 a.m. CST, the official broadcast ended, and most other stations resumed their programming.

As the inaugural ceremony was transpiring in Congress, López Obrador led a rally of supporters in the Zócalo. Some estimates place attendance at over 200,000 people.^[24] Several supporters marched down Reforma Avenue toward the Auditorio Nacional, where Calderón would address an audience of supporters after his inauguration.^[25][26] To avoid a confrontation, the federal police placed a metallic wall across the avenue in order to stop the rally, which was successful.

Institutional image

Institutional image of Calderon Administration

Calderón restored the complete National coat of arms as Institutional image of his Presidency, after President Fox's slashed eagle institutional image. This action was favorably received by politics and the Mexican society, in general.

Traditionally, the same Institutional image is extended to all the dependencies of the Executive Power, such as the Secretariats and the Attorney General of Mexico.

Cabinet appointments

Main article: Mexican Executive Cabinet

Domestic policy

During the first months of government, President Calderón took several actions that impacted his image in Mexico and beyond, particularly in Europe and in the United States. Some of these actions, such as the Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact and a cap on the salaries of public servants, have been interpreted as "seeking to fulfill a campaign promise to incorporate the agenda of election rival Andrés Manuel López Obrador into his government".^[27]

The Wall Street Journal has said that Calderón has risked the possibility of reforms in Mexico by "reaching out to traditional power brokers, forging alliances with everyone from union bosses to billionaire television moguls", in a strategy that "has bolstered the president's otherwise weak political position," but "may prevent him from making the deep political and economic changes Mexico needs to modernize".^[28][29]

Foreign policy

It is expected that Calderón will continue with the foreign policy started during Fox's term,^[30] known as the Castañeda Doctrine, in abandonment of the Estrada Doctrine. He has been expected to mediate with liberal Latin American countries.^[31]

Calderón has been a proponent of the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP),^[32] started during Fox. However, more than a simple continuation, Calderón has expanded the PPP, now including Colombia,^[33] and an agreement of cooperation against organized crime.^[34] Jorge G. Castañeda, Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the first half of Fox's administration and proponent of the "Castañeda Doctrine", has suggested that Calderón's leadership and the PPP should be used as a counter-part to Hugo Chávez's leadership of left-wing policies in Latin America.^[35] Calderón has stated that "the challenge (of the PPP) is to foster democratic practices with solid foundation in the region".^[36]

Another landmark has been the proposed Mérida Initiative, a security cooperation initiative between the United States and the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking and transnational crime.

Immigration reform

Felipe Calderón has made immigration reform one of his main priorities.

Before meeting with President Bush in March 2007, Calderón openly expressed his disapproval of building a wall between the two nations.^[37] After the U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive immigration bill, President Calderon called the decision a "grave error".

Economic policy

Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact

Main article: Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact

The international price of corn rose dramatically throughout 2006, leading to the inflation of tortilla prices in the first month of Calderón's term. Because tortillas are the main food product consumed by the country's poorest,^[38] national concerns over the rising prices immediately generated political pressure on Calderón's administration.

The president opted to use price ceilings on tortillas that protected local consumers of corn.^[39] This price control came in the form of the Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact between the government and many of the main tortilla producing companies, including Grupo Maseca and Bimbo, to put a price ceiling at $8.50 pesos per kilogram of tortilla. The hope was that a ceiling on corn prices would provide incentive for the market to lower all prices nationally.

The pact has been heavily criticized by both the right and the left. Critics argue that the pact was both nonbinding and a de facto acceptance of a 30% increase in the price of that product (from $5.95 pesos per kilogram to $8.50 pesos per kilogram).^[40][41][42] Many tortillerias ignored the agreement, leading to price increases well in excess of the $8.50.^[43] Government opposition sees this as an indication of the failure to protect the interests of its poor citizens.

However, several major supermarkets, such as Soriana and Comercial Mexicana, sell the tortillas at a lower price than the one in the agreement — as low as $5.10 pesos per kilogram^[44] — which is interpreted by liberals as evidence that price controls and the Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact were unnecessary. Additionally, PROFECO, a consumer protection government organization, has also threatened with jail those tortilla producers who charge "excessive" prices.

Three months after the pact was signed, the Secretariat of Economy informed the public that the price of tortillas was reduced in most of the 53 main cities of Mexico. However, in 27 cities and 15 states, the price remained above the agreed $8.50 pesos. In Tijuana, Morelia, San Luis Potosí, Ciudad Victoria, and Nuevo Laredo, the price of tortillas had risen despite the fact that the average price of corn has dropped from $3,500 pesos per ton to $2,500 pesos per ton. However, the director of the Maize Industry Council has defended the pact by minimizing the price increments in those cities, claiming that the pact was only intended for the Valley of Mexico, and not the whole country.^[45]

Guillermo Ortiz, governor of the Bank of Mexico, labeled the agreement "a success" for consumers and urged for it to continue as means to combat rising inflation.^[46]

First Employment Program

Fulfilling an electoral promise, President Calderón launched the First Employment Program, which aims to create new opportunities for people entering the job market. The program will give cash incentives to companies for hiring first-time job holders, including young people graduating from higher education and millions of women who have never worked.^[47]

The program has been interpreted as an effort to stop immigration into the United States.^[48]

Reactions to this program have been mixed. The president of the Mexican Association of Directors in Human Relations, Luis García, has anticipated a positive effect and even showed Nextel's subsidiary in Mexico as an example for hiring 14% of its new workforce in 2006 as people in their "first employment".^[49]

However, other groups have criticized this program as being insufficient. Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano Alarcón has admitted that the program will be insufficient to create as many new jobs as needed and has called for deeper reforms to allow for further investment.^[50]

Public servants salary cap

President Calderón announced, on his first day as president, a presidential decree limiting the president's salary and that of cabinet ministers. The measure only affects a few high-ranking officials, but excludes most of the bureaucracy and public servants in the legislative or judicial branches. According to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Reforma, the decree will affect 546 high-level government officials and save the government about US$13 million.^[51] The opposition has stated that the 10% reduction in salary as not being comprehensive enough.^[52][53]

Calderón later launched a proposal for a constitutional amendment that, if passed, would significantly lower salaries for all public servants in all three branches of government and impose a cap on compensation.^[54] The proposal also includes measures to make the remuneration of public servants more transparent and subject to fiscalization.^[55]

Security policy

President Calderón and President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with members of the Mexican Army in the background.

Despite imposing a cap on salaries of high-ranking public servants, Calderón ordered a raise on the salaries of the Federal Police and the Mexican armed forces on his first day as president.

Calderón's government also ordered massive raids on drug cartels upon assuming office in December 2006.

On January 19, 2007, Mexican authorities captured alleged drug cartel leader Pedro Díaz Parada. It was the first major drug arrest during the Calderón administration.

The next day, in a controversial move, the government announced the extradition to the United States of several drug gang leaders.^[56]

The Mexican government has also ordered Mexican soldiers and Federal Police into several cities, most notably, Tijuana and Monterrey. In Tijuana, the army ordered that all local police officers surrender their weapons, as it is suspected that many officers have ties with drug cartels. Other states where actions have been taken include Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Tabasco, and Guerrero.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Calderón said that "we have received very encouraging results. In the state of Michoacán, for example, the murder rate has fallen almost 40 per cent compared with the average over the last six months. People’s support in the regions where we are operating has grown, and that has been very important. Opinion polls have confirmed that, and I think we have made it clear to everyone that this issue is a priority for us".^[57]

On April 9, 2007, the Secretariat of Defense announced in a report the results of the first four months of Calderón's presidency. These results include the capture of 1,102 drug dealers, the detention of about $500 million pesos, 556 kilograms of marijuana, 1,419 military grade weapons, two airplanes, 630 automobiles, and 15 sea ships that transported drugs, and the destruction of 285 clandestine runways, 777 drug camps, 52,842 marijuana farms and 33,019 opium poppy farms. The report claims that these results stopped the distribution of 1,428,124 doses of marijuana, 17,728,000 doses of cocaine, 193,922,000 doses of heroin, and 6,996,000 toxic pills, stopping the intoxication of 647,771,000 people, a lot of them with irreversible damage to their health.^[58]

Despite the government's reported success in detaining drug-lords, drug-related violence continues to increase. Milenio reported a 41% increase in drug-related deaths during the first quarter of this year, compared to the corresponding period last year, as the number of deaths increased to 677 from 480.^[59] In the state of Michoacán, Excélsior reported 80 drug-related deaths during the first two months of the year, just three shy of the figure during the corresponding period last year.^[60] Reforma has reported that drug-related deaths averaged 4 per day during the first half of March, "despite the heavy presence of military police in the states of Michoacán, Baja California, Guerrero and the so-called Golden Triangle, comprising the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.^[61] In Monterrey, where the local State government has relied exclusively on Federal forces to resolve the crime issues, there has been such a surge in violence that 300 local law enforcement officers have quit their posts.^[62][63][64]

Approval ratings

Demonstrators have met Calderón during his tours of Europe and Central America, protesting human rights abuses in the 2006 Oaxaca protests and alleged electoral fraud in the controversial Presidential Election of 2006.^{[65][66][67][68]}

According to a Parametria poll conducted from January 27 to January 30, Calderón's approval rating was 48%. The director of the polling firm, Francisco Abundis, attributed the decrease in Calderón's rating from an earlier 70% principally to the increase in the price of tortilla.^[69][70]

However, according to a poll by Grupo Reforma taken from February 16 to February 18, Calderón's current approval rating is of 58%. In this poll, Mexicans interviewed give President Calderón and his actions a score of 6.6 out of 10. He is best rated in his actions on issues related to health and reducing drug trafficking (60% and 59% approval respectively), and worst rated on domestic and foreign policy (33% approval each). Sixty percent of those interviewed judged that honesty was Calderón's best attribute during these first months of government. However, Reforma's breakdown of Calderóns approval rating found that the 54% of the interviewed who thought the 2006 election was legitimate gave the president a 77% approval rating, while the 34% who said they did not think the 2006 election was legitimate gave the president an approval rating of only 34%.^[71]

According to a poll published on El Universal,^[72] Calderón's approval score increased from 6.5 (from 0 to 10) in January to 7.0 (from 0 to 10) in April. The poll took place from April 26 to May 1, and the figures have a confidence level of 95%. Individuals affiliated to the PAN and PRI gave the highest scores (8.2 and 6.9 respectively), and the biggest increases were seen in members affiliated to the PRI and PRD (1.0 and 0.9 respectively). A more recent poll by Ipsos-Bimsa shows a decrease in Calderon's approval rating, from 64% in August 2007 to 57% in November 2007.^[73]

Orders, awards and recognition

• Order of Isabel the Catholic, Grand Cross with Collar, awarded by the King Juan Carlos I of Spain on Felipe Calderón State visit to Spain, June 11, 2008.
• National Order of the Southern Cross, Grand Collar, awarded by the Government of Brazil, August 7, 2007.
• Order of the Elephant, Knight, awarded by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark on her state visit to Mexico, February 18, 2008.
• National Order of Doctor José Matías Delgado, Grand Cross, awarded by the Government of El Salvador, March 4, 2008
• Order of the Grand Merit, Collar, awarded by the President of Chile Michelle Bachelet on her state visit to Mexico.
• Order of Belize, awarded by then-Prime Minister of Belize Said Musa on Felipe Calderon state visit to Belize.
• Leader of the Year, Latin Business Chronicle, December 17, 2007.

References

External links

• (Spanish) Office of the President of Mexico site
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Felipe Calderon full access article
• (Spanish) Extended biography by CIDOB Foundation
• Felipe Calderón's speech to the Mexican people from the 'National Auditorium', 2006
• Father of A Mexican President: Luis Calderón Vega [10]

Political offices