Mexican President Vicente Fox called on Wednesday for constitutional reforms that would allow Mexican leaders to travel abroad without congressional approval -- a day after lawmakers irked Fox by refusing to grant him permission to go to Australia and Vietnam.
Fox's spokesman Ruben Aguilar harshly criticized legislators for their action, saying that their arguments -- which included rumors that Fox was going to Australia just to visit his daughter -- were "childish" and "petty."
"This administration believes that this article of the Constitution has to be reformed because it causes unwarranted tension between the executive and legislative branches," Aguilar told reporters, saying that Mexico is one of the few countries where such rules exist.
PHOTO: AFP
Later on Wednesday, Fox said the lawmakers' arguments were aimed at "generating an alarmist vision of our country."
Legislators said they were upset that Fox wanted to travel abroad while a political conflict in Oaxaca continued to smolder, and small bombs presumably planted by guerrilla groups had exploded on Monday in Mexico City.
Fox went on national TV on Tuesday night to express his disappointment, saying the decision "goes against Mexico's interests" and was "clearly partisan."
It was the second time in recent memory that Congress had exercised its power to block the president from traveling abroad -- usually a rubber-stamp vote.
The trip would have been Fox's last international trip. He leaves office on Dec. 1.
Congress voted 258-187, with six abstentions, to deny Fox permission for an official visit to Australia from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16.
From there he was to have traveled to Vietnam for the APEC summit in Hanoi on Nov. 18 and Nov, 19 .
The Senate approved the trip, but either house can block it.
Fox lashed out at Mexico's opposition political parties, especially the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI.
"I regret that lawmakers from the PRI refuse to listen to the voice of the people and aren't capable of acting responsibly to resolve local conflicts," he said.
That was an apparent reference to the refusal of the PRI governor of Oaxaca to heed calls to step down -- a stance that has fueled six months of protests, leaving nine dead and driving tourists away from one of Mexico's top tourist destinations.
On Wednesday the PRI leadership in a statement called Fox's accusations "offensive and baseless."
Also on Wednesday, a group of lawyers filed a lawsuit against Fox, saying he had not paid them US$3 million for defending him in a case over irregularities involving his 2000 campaign finances.
Monterrey-based lawyer Arturo Quintero said that he and two other lawyers filed the lawsuit in Mexico City after waiting more than a year to be paid.
The suit also names businessman Lino Korrodi, who was Fox's financial manager during his 2000 presidential campaign.
Election officials fined Fox's National Action Party after they found the party had received money from outside Mexico and exceeded campaign spending limits, among other violations.
The presidency declined to comment on the lawsuit.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS