AMLO gets second crack at Mexico presidency 2012

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I was surprised and gladdened to see that former Mexican  Presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was selected as presidential candidate - it actually happened in November in an official poll of left wing voters. Somehow I missed this until now, perhaps because Mexican news is hardly reported at all in the UK - except when it comes to drugs violence. This means AMLO gets a second chance to win the presidency of Mexico, a country racked by a violent drugs insurgency and extremes of poverty and wealth. AMLO and his supporters claim, and have strong evidence to believe, that the presidential election of 2006 was stolen by the ruling PAN party and its candidate Felipe Calderon. His term has seen the worst period of violence in the country for decades with over 50,000 killed. The British media ignores news from Latin America, and the western powers were very happy to see AMLO denied the presidency in 2006, even as they supported the so-called colour revolutions in Eastern Europe. Support for democracy around the world has too often been conditional on the political positions of those demanding democracy and fair elections. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been called a dictator in our media for years despite the fact that Venezuelan elections have been declared free and fair many times.The Mexican elite will not want to see AMLO win, given the level corruption and wealth polarisation they have enjoyed there for decades, with strong support from Washington. The whole war on drugs, while utterly failing to deal with the drugs violence, has allowed the US to get ever greater control of Mexican security forces, as it used to have elsewhere in Latin America until the pink tide that swept the rest of the continent.
That political tide has seen American backed governments fall like dominoes right across the continent, leaving only Colombia and Chile firmly in the American camp. AMLO will have to play a very strategic game to win the election in a country that has twice seen the left denied the presidency by the mass theft of votes, first in 1988 and then in 2006. At the moment he appears to be trying to reassure the Mexican business class that he will not expropriate them if he wins.
The Mexican election will fall four months before the US presidential election this November. For some unaccountable reason, the winning candidate has to wait FIVE MONTHS before taking office in December. (I guess that is how long it takes for the former government to hide all the bodies and empty the coffers.) The coincidence of campaigns north and south of the border may just possibly mean that US meddling in the election will be minimised, but I won't hold my breath. If AMLO begins to look like he could win, the Mexican right will definitely be begging their friends in the north to help avert that outcome. Any amicable encounter between AMLO and BO (that's Obama) will be used against Obama by the Republicans.
But for the long suffering Mexicans, the election of AMLO is the best chance they have of turning the corner after one of the darkest decades in the country's history. A late January poll found Andrés Manuel López Obrador in an easy first place with 41.7% support, Enrique Peña Nieto of the former ruling party PRI in second place with 34.18% and Josefina Vázquez Mota of the current ruling rightwing PAN party in third place with 24.12%. Most polls however put the PRI's Nieto 20 points in front, with AMLO on 15-20%. Mexico’s giant Grupo Televisa multimedia company and Grupo Prisa, Spain’s largest media conglomerate, dominate the airwaves and will make it hard for AMLO to get his message across.