Taking a leaf out straight out of the Clinton political playbook, former First Lady Margarita Zavala (the wife of ex-President Felipe Calderon) has emerged as the frontrunner for the National Action Party (PAN) presidential nomination in 2018.
And in keeping with other presidential hopefuls – on both sides of the border – she has conveniently penned a book to coincide with her expected upcoming campaign.
“Mi Historia” (My History) is an autobiographical work that covers her childhood, education and influences, as well as the experiences that have fashioned her political viewpoints.
Zavala breezed into the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) this week to launch her tome but not everything went completely to plan.
News photographers covering her book launch event got an unexpected scoop when a student from the Universidad de Guadalajara asked the former First Lady to sign a copy of her new book. Quick as a flash, Francisco Rubén Rodríguez Velasco unfurled a poster in front of Zavala asking the question: “Su esposo le arrebató la vida a mi padre. ¿Usted quiere arrebatármela a mí?” (Your husband took away my father’s life? Do you want to take away mine?)
Rodriguez Velasco says he has been waiting ten years for an answer as to how his “innocent” father lost his life during President Calderon’s polemic military offensive against the drug cartels that he launched shortly after taking office in 2006.
Zavala, to her credit, noted down Rodriguez Velasco’s telephone number and promised to pass along the message to her husband and get back to him with “an open dialogue for peace.”
A former Mexico City Assembly representative and federal legislator, Zavala announced her intention to run for president last year. Recent polls give her a clear lead over the most talked about contenders from other parties, including Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Morena Party, and Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Lopez Obrador, who lost to Calderon in the 2006 presidential election but fiercely contested the result, has said electing Zavala would be tantamount to giving his former rival a second term.