Tucson, Arizona  Monday, 22 January 2001
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/10122iMexico-Fox.html

MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox took power promising nothing less than a second Mexican revolution. Seven weeks later, reality is setting in.

If Fox wants to be more than a cheerleader for change, he must persuade a recalcitrant Congress, dominated by his opponents, to pass new laws and amend the constitution. And the old guard is putting up resistance, right and left.

Each of the new president's first big proposals - to transform Mexico's electric grid with help from abroad, rewrite the tax code and guarantee rights for 10 million Indians - represents the struggle between what Mexico was in the 20th century and what Fox wants it to become in the 21st.

But Mexico's constitution all but forbids foreign investment in electricity production. Political and popular opposition to tax reform is fierce. Some members of the old ruling party say that granting even limited autonomy to Mexico's Indians would be the death of the nation. All signs are that in Congress, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which ran Mexico for seven decades, and the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution may block these big initiatives.

For 70 years, a Congress led by the governing party rubber-stamped the proposals of the all-powerful presidents. Now things are different, as Fox acknowledged in his Dec. 1 inaugural address: "The president proposes; Congress disposes," he said, quoting an old saw of American politics.

"He's going to run into a wall with this Congress, which has its own authority, if he tries to abuse his power," warned Marti Batres, the Party of the Democratic Revolution's leader in the lower house of Congress.