Fox: Mexico's real thing or too good to be true?

NEW MEXICO - Once upon a time, when he ran Coca-Cola's subsidiary in Mexico, Vicente Fox routed Pepsi in the local soft drinks stakes and turned his countrymen into the biggest per capita consumers of the Real Thing on the planet.

Now he has pulled off an even bigger revolution - knocking the ruling PRI party off the dominant perch it has occupied in Mexican politics for 70 years. And all pretty much without taking his boots off.

Whatever people think of the politics of the country's new President, everyone agrees he is different. Previous incumbents were mostly sleek PRI apparatchiks with Ivy League educations and manners to match. He is a former businessman and rancher who favours tough talk and open-neck shirts. If elected, he insisted, he would wear jeans. On the campaign trail he was rarely seen without wedge-heeled cowboy boots and a thick belt with his name carved on the buckle. Small wonder his 1.98m frame tends to stand out in any crowd.

His political career, by Mexican standards, has been meteoric, using the same "all politics is local" style that was such a success at Coca-Cola. "Don't sit in the office," he explained recently, "go out in the street. The business of Coca-Cola is in the little shop, and politics is done in the farm, the school and ranches."

He was first elected to Parliament in 1988 and became Governor of rural Guanajuato state in 1995. Even before that, however, his eyes were on higher things, as he lobbied for what became known as the "Fox Law" of 1993, permitting children of foreign parents to seek the presidency. His own mother is Spanish.

By 1997 he was openly bidding for the job, touring the country and setting up a "Friends of Fox" network that soon made him the inevitable candidate this year of his National Action Party. (Pan)

Though the Pan is usually labelled conservative, Fox is a supreme pragmatist. He admires Bill Clinton, and European practitioners of the "Third Way" such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder.

Like them, he studiously cultivates the image of a man of the people. Like them, he preaches a capitalism with a human face. And like them, he is accused of being all style and no substance, ready to hijack any issue to win a vote.

Thanks to his ranching experience, he would boast, he was the only candidate who knew how to milk a cow. One moment he touted his Catholicism by flying the banner of the Virgin of Guadaloupe, Mexico's holiest image, at campaign rallies; the next he was casting aspersions on the manhood of his PRI rival, Francisco Labastida.

Fox the businessman talked of privatisation for Pemex, the state-owned oil concern; Fox the patriot swiftly changed tack when his foes accused him of being ready to sell off the national economy's crown jewel.

Now, however, the talk must be replaced by deeds, and his shoot-from-the-hip style could be more hindrance than help.

Booming soundbites are one thing; the art of coalition-building to push laws through a divided parliament is quite another.

- INDEPENDENT