MEXICO'S CALDERON TAKES POPULAR AND DANGEROUS STAND AGAINST CARTELS By

Mexicans have lost faith in many of their institutions, recent polls
show, but not in President Felipe Calderon, who boosted his shaky
presidency by launching a military offensive against drug
traffickers.

The results have been mixed - violence is on the rise with the nearly
2,700 killings in eight months, equal to all of the violent deaths in
2007. News of 10 people or more slaughtered in single incident is not
unusual.

"Finally one government - the Felipe Calderon government - is doing
something about it (the violence)," said Victor Lachica, chief
executive of Cushman & Wakefield Mexico, a commercial real estate firm.

Beyond mobilizing some 40,000 troops, who have confiscated drugs,
weapons and destroyed illegal marijuana and poppy plants, Calderon has
kept a high profile in the war; attending funerals of fallen law
enforcement agents, visiting troops and warning that the war to regain
peace will be long, costly and probably mean a considerable loss of
life. He also extradited several well-known drug traffickers to the
United States in January 2007 - among them Osiel Cardenas and Hector
"El Guero" Palma.

However, the wave of violence has taken a toll, and the traditional 70
percent approval rating for sitting presidents has slipped to 60
percent for Calderon, the conservative National Action Party leader
who took office Dec. 1, 2006. Mexicans have criticized the Calderon
government for failing to stem kidnappings and extortion, and protests
have mounted over human rights abuses by troops.

Calderon has tied his name to a war with no end is in sight. "We are
determined to leave the country much more secure," he said in a Sept.
2 radio interview.

Since Calderon's party does not control Congress, the 46-year-old
former energy minister increasingly has turned for legislative support
from the longtime rulers of Mexico, members of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI). But there are signs the PRI backing may
waver as the country's three political forces gear up for midterm
elections next July.

Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones, the PRI powerbroker, recently blasted
the Calderon government and warned that Mexico was headed for a
"perfect storm" because of economic stagnation, political strife, the
extremes of poverty and wealth and the rising bloodshed from the drug
war.

Calderon has not accepted responsibility for the problems, Beltrones
said in an interview in the daily El Universal. "He is going around
looking for someone to blame."

Contending with the violence is only one of the challenges Calderon
faces - along with rising inflation, sluggish economic growth, and a
national debate over Pemex, the ailing state-run oil
corporation.

Washington has embraced Calderon's anti-drug offensive, with Congress
approving some $400 million in aid for the counter-narcotics effort
under the so-called Plan Merida.

One of the big problems facing Calderon and his predecessor, according
to Mexico specialist Pamela Starr, are the vestiges of the PRI's
authoritarian rule.

Political changes were enacted not for democracy but to shore up the
PRI's hold on power, said Starr, a senior lecturer at the University
of Southern California. The reforms backfired on the ruling party,
leading to an opposition-controlled Congress in 1997 and the election
of the opposition candidate, former President Vicente Fox, in 2000.

"These reforms were never designed to create democracy in Mexico, much
less an efficiently operating one," Starr said.

But no one is giving up on democracy yet, especially in a country
clouded with the violence of organized crime.

Just days after Calderon was showered with petals in Puebla, his
opponent in the bitter 2006 presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, stood adorned with a garlands of flowers before supporters in
Guerrero and - with his eyes on the 2012 presidential contest - called
on Mexicans to resolve their differences at the ballot box.

(Bussey reports for The Miami Herald.)