Mexico Trucker Online

CORPUS CHRISTI — For three weeks, Laredo produce importer José Carmona has been on a whirlwind tour of Texas, one that could spell a direct challenge to Mexico’s election law and change the pace and tone of its upcoming presidential campaign.

Carmona, a Mexican citizen, has logged more than 2,800 miles across the state on a mission for the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, under the banner of an organization he leads called the Red Paisanos, Spanish for the Countryman Network.

The network is informing Mexicans about the absentee voting process for the July 2006 presidential election — the first to allow them to vote from abroad. But it’s also touting the PRD’s presumptive candidate, former Mexico City mayor and early frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

And since Carmona is doing this in the company of a PRD member, he appears to be on a collision course with the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, because it is illegal under Mexican law for parties to campaign on foreign soil.

But the law may prove difficult to enforce and might be changed. Carmona’s road trip could be its first test as political parties are drawn to the estimated 4.3 million eligible Mexican voters living abroad.

Parties not only are banned from spending money or campaigning outside Mexico, they can be fined even if non-Mexicans in another country campaign on a candidate’s behalf, IFE head Carlos Ugalde Ramirez said in Mexico City last week.

Another IFE official confirmed Wednesday that campaigning in the United States is off limits.

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MEXICO CITY — Adding to the drama of the presidential election — a high stakes battle that has seen massive government ballot fraud, an assassination and, most recently, a ruling party knocked from power after 70 years — is the first chance in for Mexicans living abroad to vote.

The millions of possible votes could dramatically affect the outcome next year, but whether they’ll materialize, and which candidate they’ll favor, remains a mystery.

Top election officials said Friday they expect most eligible expatriates to wait until the last minute to register. The officials expressed hope that voters abroad would be able to educate themselves about their choices despite laws preventing the appearance of candidates or distribution of campaign messages outside Mexico.

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LA PAZ, Mexico — While rival parties still are choosing their candidates, populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador already was out of the gate Thursday, launching a road trip designed to keep momentum as the early frontrunner for the 2006 presidential election.

With promises to provide public-works jobs for the poor, government pensions for the elderly and better education for the nation’s youths, the former Mexico City mayor sounded more like former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt plugging the New Deal than a saber-rattling Latin American leftist, as some have branded him.

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