Looking forward to the details. Lets hope the initial Mexican...

Looking forward to the details.

Lets hope the initial Mexican pilot in 8,000 schools will be extended nation-wide. Still early in Calderon's term and his anti-drugs and anti-violence stands are proving politically popular - as indicated in the Economist article below. Also, interesting to note in the article that the schools drug-testing program is regarded as one of Calderon's significant achievements in his first 7 months in office.

Mexico a year later
Jul 6th 2007
From the Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire

What Felipe Calderón has achieved

A year after hotly contested elections and seven months into his term of office, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón has achieved more, and is more popular, than might have seemed possible after he beat off a heated challenge to his narrow electoral win. He has assertively launched an anti-crime offensive, forged a working relationship with the opposition and secured a least one important legislative victory thus far. He has also seen the prowess of his main political nemesis ebb in recent months. However, he still faces considerable challenges in advancing his agenda, and, if his latest fiscal reform plan is any indication, will have to make compromises to make his goals politically feasible.

July 2nd marked one year since the 2006 presidential elections. Mr Calderón’s defeated opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, called a mass protest to mark the occasion, and continues to insist that the election was stolen from him via fraud. However, though Mr López Obrador still commands a large and loyal core following, the numbers drawn to his marches have shrunk. And he has failed to obstruct the workings of government, as he pledged to do after he lost his legal challenge to the Calderón win.

Instead, many legislators from his left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) have opted to at least negotiate, if not always co-operate, with the Calderón government. Indeed, five PRD governors recently met with the president at his residence to discuss the newly unveiled tax reform bill.

That does not mean that the PRD is making it easy for the conservative president. He has had to resort to an informal alliance with the centrist Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to advance his legislative priorities. Thanks to negotiations with the PRI, he was able to secure approval of an important pension reform bill in March. He is now hoping that the fiscal package, presented on June 20th, will also be passed with the help of PRI lawmakers.

Given his early successes and determined policy stance, popular support for the Calderón administration has been building. One poll puts his approval rating at around 65%. According to another conducted at the end of June by the El Universal newspaper, 42% of respondents would vote for Mr Calderón today, against 31% for Mr López Obrador. No more than 36% voted for Mr Calderón in a five-way race last July 2nd, less than one percentage point more than those who picked his leftist opponent.

Achievements to date
In its first seven months, the Calderón administration has surprised sceptics with the extent of its achievements on several fronts, although only in the least contentious case—entailing pension reform—has success thus far been unalloyed.

* Anti-crime and anti-drug initiatives. Mr Calderón made the fight against crime and drug-trafficking a centrepiece of his administration. Soon after taking office sent around 24,000 army troops into drug-producing and trafficking regions in order to quell related violence. The move has proved highly popular, and has been followed up more recently with a plan to revamp the federal police forces, including removal of nearly 300 commanders and announcement of a year-long training course for more than 1,000 high-ranking state and federal officers. On July 1st the president also introduced a pilot programme of drug testing for school students.

Although the deployment of troops has been welcomed, it has also triggered a wave of reprisals, creating the impression that violence is, if anything, increasing. A lasting improvement in the security situation will be important in maintaining the government’s popularity, but could prove elusive. Questions are already being raised about whether Mr Calderón moved too quickly against the drug-traffickers, and whether the army is up to the task. There are those who fear that army involvement could come at a high cost, given previous experience of military officers succumbing to monetary inducements by criminal groups. In 1996 Mexico’s anti-drug czar, General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, was arrested and imprisoned after only two months on the job on the basis that he had protected one of Mexico’s most infamous drug-traffickers, Amado Carrillo, known as the “lord of the skies” for his prowess in airlifting narcotics to the US market.