Mexican Govt. change should not affect Belize
Mexico has a new President and he’s a “Fox”, Vicente Fox that is. On his 58th birthday, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) was chosen to become the next President of Mexico, breaking the 70-year political reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Mexico’s Ambassador to Belize, Enrique Hubbard, told News Five this morning that his country’s change of government did not happen overnight.
Enrique Hubbard, Mexico’s Ambassador to Belize
“It wasn’t something sudden, that surprises anybody. I want to stress the fact that President Zedillo deserves a big applause. He was always adamant about the way this should be run, what should happen. He insisted that it would be a peaceful transition, no matter what happened, no matter who won and this is exactly what’s happening. The winner, Vicente Fox, last night also paid homage to President Zedillo last night saying he had acting like a statesman.”
“I must say that foreign policy was not a main part of the campaign. Most of them, have expressed, one time or another, that the area of foreign policy is the most steady part of our government. We cannot expect big changes in this, first of all because our main principles of foreign policy are printed in the constitution and cannot be changed and second because everyone recognizes what the trends are right now: globalization and free trade. We have very close relationship with Central America and South America because of cultural and vicinity factors, so I’m sure that will happen. Also, besides everything else, we have a professional foreign service which means there will always be a steady transition between one government and another because the basis of the whole thing is a majority of people that are career foreign officers.”
“We are very happy, we can say the country is in peace and will continue to be like that.”
Official numbers from Sunday’s elections will not be released until Wednesday, however, the latest statistics show Fox winning with 43% of the vote, while the PRI candidate, Francisco Labastida, had 38% and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party received 17%. Despite pre-election allegations that the election might be tainted, by all accounts, this was not the case on Sunday. There are close to sixty million registered voters in Mexico and 65% of them participated in the election. President Elect Vicente Fox will begin his 6-year term this December.
