México

Felipe Calderón ganó las elecciones en México y es el próximo presidente, pero Andrés Manuel López Obrador se niega a conceder la victoria e insiste con un recuento. Otro palo en el toor del payaso de Chávez y sus millones de petrodólares:

Mexico's choice for its next president is between two candidates that offer starkly different visions: Felipe Calderon calls for more openness, competition and decentralization; Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador calls for greater government spending, centralization of political and economic decision making, and a prominent role for the state in development. The difference in visions is the difference between modernity and old-style populism of the kind that failed Mexico in the 20th century.

The closeness of the election outcome reveals a divided country and confirms that President Vicente Fox's great achievement of establishing economic stability of a kind not seen in more than 30 years is not enough. Mexican reforms under Fox have been virtually non-existent and have left the country with infrastructure bottlenecks, public and private monopolies, and prohibitively expensive bureaucratic regulations that are largely responsible for the country's mediocre growth. It is clear that Mexico still needs to break away from its state-dominated past for the vast majority of its population to benefit. And it is clear that Mexico's statist legacy --with all the privileged interests that remain -- makes it difficult to reform.