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PRESIDENT FELIPE CALDERON'S FIRST STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS SURROUNDED BY CONTROVERSY.

Article Excerpt
As expected, the first State of the Union address in President Felipe Calderon's six-year term was surrounded by controversy, not so much in its content as in the format of the speech. For many years, the tradition was for the president to deliver his speech, known as the informe, both orally and in written form to a joint session of Congress at the start of the legislative session. This year, Calderon delivered only a written copy to Congress at the San Lazaro legislative palace on Sept. 1 and retired after speaking for about 90 seconds as part of a negotiated settlement with opposition parties. The president was still able to deliver his speech orally from the National Palace to an invited audience and to the Mexican public on Sept. 2 via a televised transmission.

PRD, PAN negotiate format

The awkward format was the result of a negotiation between legislators from Calderon's conservative Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) and the center-left Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD). The third major party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), was left out of negotiations but went along with the agreement in the interest of bringing a peaceful resolution to the dispute between the two other parties.

The PRD was seeking to use the State of the Union address to question the legitimacy of Calderon's presidency, which it claims was obtained through a fraudulent vote in July 2006 (see SourceMex, 2006-07-12 and 2006-09-06). The PAN was trying to avoid a repeat of last year, when the PRD and...

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