Vicente Fox successfully denies the Mexican people the right to vote for his most popular opponent:

In a vote that casts doubt on the strength of Mexico's fledgling democracy, this city's popular leftist mayor lost a critical battle in Congress on Thursday over a measure that is likely to force him off the ballot in presidential elections next year and could lead to his imprisonment. Hundreds of thousands of people were gathered in Mexico City's central square throughout the day to protest the action, a rare proceeding known in Mexico as a "desafuero," in which Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador was stripped of his official immunity so he could stand trial in a minor land dispute. In terms of political rights, the Mexican Constitution holds suspects guilty until proved innocent, so Mr. Lopez will be banned from politics until the end of a trial. Legislators in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies began debating the charges about 10 a.m. in a scathing session that continued uninterrupted until the evening, when the vote was held. Of the 489 who attended the session, 360 favored lifting the immunity, 127 were opposed and there were 2 abstentions. Political analysts said that the proceedings were a critical test in this country's transition to a full-fledged democracy that began just five years ago when Mexicans broke seven decades of single-party rule with the peaceful election of Vicente Fox, the first president to come from an opposition party. The protests, which had largely ended by late Thursday, brought comparisons to the recent pro-democracy demonstrations in the Ukraine that helped lift Viktor A. Yuschenko to power. But while Mr. Lopez said support for him would grow, his adversaries seemed confident the protests would die out soon.