Mexico City mayor to run for presidential candidacy
Mexico City Mayor Andres M. Lopez Obrador, who would face criminal charges after being stripped of his immunity from prosecution, announced Thursday that he will run for presidential candidacy.

The left-wing mayor, one of the country's most popular politicians, made the announcement before a crowd of 100,000 supporters in the central square of Mexico City.

Hours later, Mexico's Congress voted 360 to 127 to strip Lopez Obrador's immunity. He could now be arrested and undergo a criminal trial for the presumed offense of contempt of court and abuse of authority, according to the files by the federal Attorney General's office.

The mayor refuted the charges, saying the proceeding was part of a plot by Mexican President Vicente Fox and former head of state Carlos Salinas to put him out of the presidential race.

He said he would run for office in the internal elections of his party (PRD) to run for the presidency, wherever he might be. Lopez Obrador is likely to be fired as mayor and go to jail pending trial in the coming days, and would probably be banned from the July 2006 elections if found guilty.

The internal elections of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) have been scheduled for July 31 this year, and Lopez Obrador's rival in the party nomination was Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a three-time presidential candidate and founder of the PRD.

The followers of Lopez Obrador cheered him when he crossed the cental square to the platform facing the Mexico City Cathedral, where he presented himself as a leader who is "persecuted by the governmental authoritarianism and the corrupt police."

Lopez Obrador said he would willingly go to jail if the legislators removed his immunity and the justice orders his arrest.

"This struggle has just begun, our movement is a majority at Mexico City and the rest of the country and we're going for a big victory, irrespective of whatever may happen in the process for the removal of my immunity," he said.

Lopez Obrador asked his followers to refrain from going to the Congress and reject violence.

The Lower House of Congress is dominated by the Revolutionary Institutional Party, which holds a majority of seats, and the ruling National Action Party, while Lopez Obrador's PRD party has only 97 seats in the 500-member Congress.