MEXICAN LEFTISTS SILENCE FOX 09-02-06

By Miguel Angel Gutierrez Sat Sep 2, 12:38 AM ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Vicente Fox was forced to abandon his last state of the nation address to Congress on Friday after leftist lawmakers alleging election fraud seized the podium and refused to let him speak.

Shortly before Fox was due to give his speech, dozens of legislators who support leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador marched up to the podium, some with banners calling the president a traitor to democracy.

Fox, who leaves office in December, avoided a more serious showdown with those who contend Lopez Obrador was robbed of the election by simply giving a copy of his speech to Congress officials and quickly returning to his residence.

It was the first time in Mexican history that opposition legislators have blocked the president's annual address and marked an escalation of a crisis that has rocked the country since a bitterly contested July 2 presidential election.

"Faced with the attitude of a group of legislators that makes it impossible to read the speech I have prepared for this occasion, I am leaving the building," Fox said in the lobby of Congress before walking out.

In a televised address to the nation later on Friday, Fox said the protest that silenced him was "not an affront to me personally but to the office of the president and the Mexican people."

In the streets outside Congress, small groups of left-wing protesters threw rocks and bottles at lines of riot police but there were no serious clashes.

Lopez Obrador has led supporters in huge street protests in the last two months and his Party of the Democratic Revolution had vowed to deny Fox a platform in Congress on Friday.

They accuse the president of complicity in a massive fraud to give victory to conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon, his former energy minister. But foreign observers and Mexico's top electoral court do not agree the election was rigged.

Fox was hailed as a democracy hero when he was elected in 2000, ending 71 years of one-party rule, and still enjoys high popularity ratings as he nears the end of his term.

UNREST

However, political unrest over the contested election to replace him may cloud his legacy.

Lopez Obrador's supporters have paralyzed central Mexico City with protest camps and he has vowed to make Mexico ungovernable if Calderon's victory is confirmed.

Calderon, who won the vote by just 244,000 votes out of 41 million, is expected to be named president-elect in coming days after the top electoral court this week rejected fraud claims.

Lopez Obrador railed on Friday against what he says are Mexico's corrupt institutions, such as the courts.

"To hell with their institutions," he told a rally of supporters in Mexico City's central Zocalo square. But he called on them not to march to the Congress building, where violent clashes had been feared.

Fox, a rancher and former Coca-Cola executive, took a swipe back at his rival in his televised address.

"Whoever attacks our laws and institutions attacks our history, attacks Mexico," he said. "Mexico demands harmony, not anarchy."

Fox's approval rating hit 68 percent, its highest level since 2001, in a Reforma newspaper poll on Friday. Another poll in El Universal showed him with a 67 percent rating.

Many Mexicans like Fox's affable style and he is credited with stabilizing Mexico's economy and opening government to public scrutiny after decades of authoritarian rule.

But he failed to deliver on promises of rapid economic growth and millions of new jobs, and antagonized opposition parties who blocked his reforms in Congress.

"What happened today was the result of his ineptitude," said Alejandro Troncoso, a veterinary student who joined the protests outside Congress on Friday. "Running Coca-Cola is not the same as running a country."