Rising in Polls, AMLO Comes Under Fire from Rivals Associated Press
go to original June 7, 2012

Cars pass by a billboard of Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in Mexico City, Wednesday, June 6, 2012. The ad for AshleyMadison.com, a website that promises to help people have discreet extra-marital affairs, shows a photo of Pena Nieto wearing a white dress shirt with a red lipstick stain on the collar and a message that reads in Spanish: "Unfaithful to His Family. Faithful and Committed to His Country." Campaign front-runner Pena Nieto has acknowledged cheating on his former wife. (AP/Alexandre Meneghini)

Mexico City - Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador charged Wednesday that his rivals are using dirty tricks and attack ads against him, warning that could plunge Mexico into political upheaval like that following the 2006 election.

His rise in recent polls has made him the focus of fire from the other candidates, front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and Josefina Vazquez Mota of the governing National Action Party.

Both simultaneously aired attack ads this week, including one that quotes Lopez Obrador out of context, to depict him as violent, authoritarian or disrespectful of democracy.

Similar charges of extremist views, along with Lopez Obrador's own occasionally angry rhetoric, erased his lead in the polls in 2006 and contributed to his narrow election loss to current President Felipe Calderon. The results sparked months of protests by the leftist's supporters.

Lopez Obrador is known for crying foul - he alleged vote fraud in 2006 without ever providing much evidence of it. But this time around he may have some reason to feel unfairly victimized.

"The dirty war has started, to disorient people," Lopez Obrador said Wednesday. While widely feared by Mexico's business community in 2006 when his slogan was "the poor come first," he has largely mended fences with entrepreneurs since then.

But Vazquez Mota's campaign aired an ad this week that includes footage of Lopez Obrador at a recent rally saying "the path of taking up arms (is) a possibility to achieve the transformation of the people."

What Lopez Obrador really said was: "We do not have contempt for those who think that the path of taking up arms (is) a possibility to achieve the transformation of the people, but I want to make it clear to those who think that way, that we are going to engage in a struggle by peaceful, electoral means."

Vazquez Mota had previously focused her criticism on Pena Nieto, trying to keep the front-runner and his party from returning to the presidency. Before losing to her party in the 2000 elections, the PRI held the presidency without interruption from 1929 to 2000, ruling with a combination of handout programs, corruption and repression.

Vazquez Mota defended her swing to attacking Lopez Obrador, saying he and Pena Nieto were "two faces of the same party," referring to the fact that the leftist started his career in the PRI.

Still, it was unclear whether Lopez Obrador would gain any sympathy in the wake of the attacks, given that he has spent years portraying himself as a victim of vote fraud in 2006.

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