López Obrador Before Congress: The Defendant Turns Prosecutor
By Al Giordano,
Posted on Thu Apr 7th, 2005 at 06:03:51 PM EST
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/4/7/18351/79942The late Charles F. McCarthy used to frequently tell me: “Some men are born great. Some men achieve greatness. And others have greatness thrust upon them.”
As Mexico City Governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador showed today, sometimes that greatness is thrust upon men and women by adversity and by the ill will of those who oppose them.
López Obrador arrived this afternoon at the Mexican national Congress and sat quietly on stage through a presentation of accusations against him by one of President Vicente Fox’s assistant attorneys general, Carlos Javier Vega Memije, who repeated, again and again, that the proposal to take away López Obrador’s right to run for president was a matter of “the state of law,” because his city administration supposedly violated a judge’s order for eleven months in 2001 and 2002. The prosecutor spoke loftily about “ending impunity” and building “a Mexico of laws.”
But when the prosecutor’s allotted 30 minute speaking period ran out, Vega Memije kept prattling on about the importance of not breaking rules. He was shouted down by many legislators from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD, in its Spanish initials) bench and concluded his remarks by shouting shrilly over the din.
Next it was López Obrador’s turn. He took the podium and commented to the gathered congressmen, beaming a smile: “You’re going to have to make a desafuero for attorney Vega Memije for violating the rules.”
more: Partial text of a stirring speach...a must read!