Mexican Elections: Dirty War Zooms
The influence peddling scandal affecting government presidential candidate Felipe Calderon forecasts a nastier war within the election race.

Analyst Luis Javier Garrido predicted Calderon will step up his campaign of slander and demagogy to counter charges by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate of the coalition Por el bien de todos.

Garrido adds that comments on the "inconvenient brother-in-law" Diego Hildebrando Zavala, and the scandal over his contracts with 19 public companies, shatter Calderon's narrow chances to win the race.

La Jornada daily reports that Zavala admitted that one of his companies (Meta Data) landed an excellent contract with state-run Petroleos Mexicanos when Calderon was energy secretary.

Meta Data was closed early this year for making false tax statements, but Lopez Obrador recalled that Hildebrando SA, also belonging to Zavala, had income exceeding 240 million dollars.

The evidence should force the PAN (Accion Nacional) party candidate to withdraw because his much touted "clean hands" are now smeared with charges of embezzlement to fund his election campaign.

But until now, Calderon is engaged in desperate efforts in his costly dirty media advertising to conceal the scope of his corruption, the La Jornada editorial concluded.