Felipe Calderón
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (b. 18 August 1962 in Morelia) is a Mexican politician. He is the current presidential candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) to the upcoming 2006 presidential election. He is also a former president of his party and former Secretary of Energy in the cabinet of President Vicente Fox.
Early years
Calderón is the son of Luis Calderón Vega and María del Carmen Hinojosa González. He received a bachelor's degree in law from the Escuela Libre de Derecho in Mexico City, took courses for a masters in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and has a master's degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is married to Margarita Zavala, deputy with license of the National Action Party (PAN), and has three children: María (9), Luis Felipe (7) and Juan Pablo (3).
Political career
Calderón was president of the PAN's youth movement in his early twenties.
He was a federal representative in the Legislative Assembly, and on two different occasions in the Chamber of Deputies. He ran for the governorship of Michoacan in 1995 and served as national president of the PAN from 1996 to 1999. During his tenure, his party gained control of 14 state capitals but also lost presence in the federal chamber of deputies.
Soon after Vicente Fox took office as president, Calderón was appointed director of Banobras, a national development bank. Later on he joined the presidential cabinet as Secretary of Energy, substituting Ernesto Martens. He left the post in May 2004.
He played a mayor roll in the creation of the FOBAPROA fraud, when private debt passed on to the FOBAPROA trust.This trust was originally intended to rescue the financial system of México, but many corrupt bankers benefit from this.
2006 presidential campaign
Felipe Calderón was chosen as the PAN presidential candidate by members of his own party in a series of 3 primary elections at the end of 2005. In these elections, he defeated the former Secretary of the Interior, Santiago Creel, and the former Governor of Jalisco, Alberto Cárdenas by a great margin.
Calderón accepted his party's nomination on December 4 2005, and began his campaign on January 1 2006. Most polls from December 2005 to March 2006 placed him in second place behind Andrés Manuel López Obrador, presidential candidate of the Alliance for the Well-Being of All and ahead of Roberto Madrazo, candidate of the Alliance for Mexico. Some recent polls have showed Calderón to lead the election.