Vicente Fox Quesada is elected the first President of México from an opposition party, the Partido Acción Nacional, after more than 70 years of continuous rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional.
Vicente Fox Quesada (American Spanish: [biˈsente ˈfoks keˈsaða]; born 2 July 1942) is a Mexican businessman and politician who served as the 62nd President of Mexico from 1 December 2000 to 30 November 2006.
Campaigning as a right-wing populist, Fox ran for and was elected president on the National Action Party (PAN) ticket, becoming the first president not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since 1929. He is currently the co-president of the Centrist Democrat International, an international organization of centre-right political parties.Fox was elected President of Mexico in the 2000 presidential election, a historically significant election since it made him the first president elected from an opposition party since the election of Francisco I. Madero in 1911. Fox finished in first place with 42 percent of the vote.As president, he mostly followed the neoliberal economic policies that his predecessors from the PRI had adopted since the late 1980s. The first half of his administration saw a further shift of the federal government to the right, strong relations with the United States and George W. Bush, unsuccessful attempts to apply a value-added tax to medicines and to build an airport in Texcoco, and a major diplomatic conflict with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa in 2001 called into question the Fox administration's commitment to breaking with the authoritarian past of the PRI era.
The second half of his administration was marked by his conflict with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then Mexico City's Mayor. The PAN and the Fox administration unsuccessfully attempted to remove López Obrador from office and to prevent him from participating in the 2006 presidential elections. The Fox administration also became embroiled with diplomatic conflicts with Venezuela and Bolivia after supporting the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which was opposed by those two countries. His last year in office oversaw the controversial 2006 elections, where the PAN candidate Felipe Calderón was declared winner by a very narrow margin over his opponent López Obrador, who claimed that the elections were rigged and refused to recognize the results, calling for protests across the country. In the same year, the southern state of Oaxaca was the scene of a teacher's strike which culminated into protests and violent clashes asking for the resignation of governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.On the other hand, Fox was credited with maintaining economic growth during his administration, and reducing the poverty rate from 43.7% in 2000 to 35.6% in 2006.After serving as president of Mexico for six years, Fox returned to his home state of Guanajuato, where he now resides with his wife and family. Since leaving the presidency, Fox has been involved in public speaking and the development of the Vicente Fox Center of Studies, Library and Museum.Fox was expelled from the PAN in 2013, after having endorsed the PRI presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, in the 2012 elections. In the 2018 election Fox again endorsed the other PRI's candidate, now José Antonio Meade.