TV debate turns up heat in Mexico election

Obrador supporters gathered in Mexico City's main square after the TV debate. Picture / Reuters.

MEXICO CITY - Leftists waving hammer and sickle flags, a divisive TV debate and a shooting have turned up the heat in a nasty presidential campaign that is splitting Mexico between left and right.

The two main candidates in the race to replace President Vicente Fox are in a dead heat in opinion polls and a live debate appeared to do little to change that.

Many newspapers on Wednesday declared Felipe Calderon the winner of verbal jousts with leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

But the latter scored points for keeping his infamous temper under control and sticking to the line that his plans to help Mexico's millions of poor are nothing radical.

Extremist or not, 10,000 of his supporters who gathered in the capital's Zocalo square to watch the debate, on Tuesday night local time, on two big screens hurled insults and jeers whenever Calderon spoke.

Two animators on stilts waved the red hammer and sickle communist flag to cheers from the crowd.

Lopez Obrador commands fierce loyalty from supporters, as well as fear among the rich who call him a populist who will ruin Mexico's economy.

"He's the one who understands the poor. There's no reason for Mexico to have such poverty," follower Joel Iniesta, 68, said in the square.

Analysts were divided over who won the debate.

Calderon, from Fox's National Action Party, attacked Lopez Obrador, warning he would drag Mexico to financial ruin.

He kept up his harsh tone the next morning, denying a claim by the leftist that his brother-in-law had evaded paying taxes.

"I had never seen him tell a lie of that size before, an enormous lie told with total impunity. Let's call him by his name: he is a liar," Calderon told Mexican radio.

Rhetoric has spun out of control in recent weeks and electoral authorities have had to ban libelous television spots by the two front runners.

Aggressive ads by Calderon, like one comparing Lopez Obrador to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, provoked the leftist into responding with harsh rhetoric.

"I am very worried about the polarisation that has happened in the electoral race. It's very regrettable that an intolerant, radical right that is inexpert in matters of state is taking on a very violent left," said third-placed candidate Roberto Madrazo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Fears of a return to the endemic political violence of the mid-1990s were rekindled on Tuesday when gunmen shot at the family of a jailed businessman who had threatened to release videos damaging to Lopez Obrador. No one was injured.

"They have gone from verbal violence to physical violence. It's very serious to have shootings beginning with 25 days to go to the election," Madrazo said.

Violence has shadowed the election campaign, which began in January. Police shot dead two striking steel workers in April and a 14-year-old boy died in a peasant riot near the capital.

Drug killings, including the beheading of two policemen, have rocked the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

Mexico only installed full democracy in 2000 when Fox ended seven decades of single-party rule and analysts worry that institutions are still fragile.

- REUTERS