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By Associated PressIt recommends that Mexico City's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lose his immunity.
MEXICO CITY - A congressional panel recommended that Mexico City's mayor face criminal charges for allegedly disobeying a court order in a land-use case, a decision that could keep him out of next year's presidential election.
By a 3-1 vote Friday, the committee ruled that the full 500-member House should decide whether to strip Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the immunity from criminal prosecution that he holds as an elected official.
At stake is the political future of a man who has built a huge following thanks to heavy spending on social programs and construction projects in the Western Hemisphere's biggest city.
While he has not formally declared his candidacy, Lopez Obrador has consistently led public-opinion polls on potential candidates in the 2006 election. But under most interpretations of Mexican law, anyone facing criminal prosecution may not run for public office.
The federal attorney general's office asked Congress to strip the mayor's immunity so he can face charges that he ignored a court order to stop construction of a hospital access road on private land.
The congressional committee met privately for nearly seven hours while hundreds of demonstrators loyal to the mayor filled the narrow streets of the capital's center.
Dozens more gathered outside the House. When heavily armed security guards barred them from entering the chamber, legislative staffers from Lopez Obrador's left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party paraded through the halls waving signs and chanting, "No to the impeachment!"
The committee's sole member from President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party said the panel's decision had nothing to do with politics.
"We didn't vote against a candidate," Alvaro Elias Loredo said. "We didn't vote against a party, not against a president or against the citizenry. We voted with the law, the rule of law."
But the panel's chairman, Horacio Duarte, a member of the mayor's left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, called the decision a "blow against Mexico's fledgling democracy."
At a news conference after the vote, Lopez Obrador said the day that the full House votes on the matter, a "new chapter will begin in the fight to represent popular will and the civil, social and political rights of Mexicans."
"Our movement is peaceful," said the mayor, who has suggested he may seek the presidency from behind bars if necessary. "Those who resort to force are those who are wrong."
Lopez Obrador insists the land-use case has been orchestrated by the Fox administration to prevent him from entering the presidential race.
Mexico's constitution limits presidents to a single six-year term, and Fox is widely thought to be promoting the candidacy of his top Cabinet member, Interior Secretary Santiago Creel. Both Fox and Creel deny that.
The committee said it would turn its case files over to the House leadership committee today, but the House was not expected to put the matter to a vote until next week at the earliest. If legislators did strip the mayor of immunity, a judge would have to decide whether to seek his arrest.