President Vicente Fox hits the halfway point of his six-year presidency today, but some Mexicans say his chances to transform Mexico are slipping away.
So far, Fox's greatest achievement has been winning the election. His victory in July 2000 ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose grip on power was so strong that writer Mario Vargas Llosa called it "the perfect dictatorship."
Many Mexicans blamed nearly all their problems on the PRI, the only government most had ever known. As a campaigner, Fox encouraged that. He vowed to bring economic growth of 7 percent a year, spreading jobs, schools and homes around the country while stamping out corruption.
But after three years in office, Fox has brought little growth. The economy has been hurt by a US slowdown and increased competition from Asia. The number of new jobs falls far short of the number of new workers entering the labor market.
Democracy itself helped frustrate his promises of broad political and economic reforms. Voters have kept Fox's center-right National Action Party a minority in Congress, and the president has been frustrated in his attempts to pass a series of reforms.
Mexicans accustomed to a domineering president have, for the first time in their lives, a leader who must share power with a Congress dominated by hostile parties in both the lower and upper houses.
The largest bloc of lawmakers are from the PRI, and Fox had an ally in PRI congressional leader Elba Esther Gordillo. But she has been on the verge of losing her post because of a revolt in the ranks over her ties to the president.
Facing a hostile Congress and with a series of elections coming up, "He's a lame duck," political analyst Jorge Chabat said.
Fox took office on Dec. 1, 2000, promising a close relationship with the US and with his friend, President George W. Bush.
But the Sept. 11 attacks yanked Bush's attention to the Middle East and relations were strained by Mexico's reluctance to endorse unilateral US action against Iraq.
Fox's drive to win a change in US treatment of Mexican migrants has faltered.
Many of Fox's advisers who were given senior positions shortly after his election have disappeared.
UN Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser was forced out after saying many people in the US treated Mexico like a back yard. Aguilar Zinser has accused Fox of embarrassing him to improve relations with the US.
Fox has remained insistently upbeat. He said Wednesday that "real, objective indicators" show "that we have a marvelous country," one with low inflation, growing investment, rising incomes and a better debt structure. But it was a country that many Mexicans did not recognize.
"Where did Fox get the temerity to say that?" asked columnist Carlos Marin in the newspaper Milenio.
The nation's largest business associations took out full-page ads in newspapers last week pleading with politicians to pass reforms.
"The economy is not growing. Every year there are more Mexicans demanding work but not finding opportunities," they complained.
On Thursday, tens of thousands marched in Mexico City to protest Fox and his market-oriented reform proposals.
Chabat said Fox could have used his popularity soon after winning the election to browbeat Congress into passing some of his reforms. Instead he decided to negotiate.
While Fox hoped for gains in midterm congressional elections this year, it was the PRI that gained seats while Fox's party saw its share fall one-quarter to 151 seats in the 500-seat lower house of Congress.
"Now the situation is complicated," Chabat said. "There is no time. We are in the second half of his government" and politicians are already starting to look toward the 2006 presidential races.
"I think that the Fox government is basically over, that he won't reach any important change in the coming years," he said.
Like earlier PRI presidents, Fox has promoted his administration heavily on television and radio. One often-broadcast radio spot repeatedly sang: "Thank you, Vicente Fox, for democracy."
However, his office said he didn't have any immediate plans to mark his three-year presidential anniversary today.
Fox remains popular. A September poll, conducted by the Reforma newspaper and with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, found that 57 percent of voters approved of his performance -- about the same level as at the end of 2001.
But when asked if they believed him when he speaks about the accomplishments of his government, a narrow majority said no.
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