MEXICO CITY _ Elections in Mexico aren't what they used to be. Before the year 2000, Mexican presidents used to handpick their successors and manipulate election results.

The whole electoral process was a farce. Campaigns were tame and offenseless. And the winner was always _ surprise! _ the president's choice. Not any more.

This year, Mexican President Vicente Fox's candidate is Felipe Calderon, from the National Action Party (PAN). However, Fox's support _ sometimes a little too obvious _ is not enough. Most surveys _ except for a couple of recent ones _ put Calderon behind the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; but Calderon has few days left to decisively surpass his rival before the July 2 elections.

I spoke with the PAN candidate (before the first debate) at his campaign headquarters in Mexico City and was surprised that he didn't have dark circles under his eyes from getting no more than four or five hours of sleep a night. The 43-year-old Calderon, bespectacled and balding, comes from a family with a long political pedigree _ his father was a PAN founder _ and has only one thing in mind: taking over Lopez Obrador's lead.

"Yes, that's the contest," he told me. "The difference between him and me is very simple: I shall be the jobs president and he is Mexico's `job-killer'."

There's a new way to do politics in Mexico. It is a dirty war through television advertisements. In the ad that has captured the most attention, Lopez Obrador is accused of being authoritarian and intolerant, and is compared to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

"I don't have to approve publicity put out by the PAN," Calderon said, "but I agree with what it reflects. Hugo Chavez told President Fox to `shut up' _ which to most of us Mexicans was repugnant _ and Lopez Obrador does the same by also telling President Fox to `shut up,' and to make it worse, tells him: `shut up, chatterbox.'"

Lopez Obrador, according to Calderon, "is like Hugo Chavez in this authoritarianism, in the sense that only he holds the truth, and by completely ignoring the law as a ruling principle of human coexistence and democracy."

"Let me try to understand your campaign," I said. "Is it to create fear among Mexicans that if Lopez Obrador becomes president, Mexico will become an authoritarian state?"

"No," he answered. "It is simply pronouncing the truth: that I am a better choice than Lopez Obrador."

"You, too, are accused of being ill-tempered," I noted.
"Well, I don't know," he responded, seriously. "But I'm told I'm a man of character ... and I assure you that for Mexico it will be good having a president with character and a steadfast hand."

Calderon belongs to the most conservative party in Mexico, the one most attuned to the Roman Catholic Church. However, Calderon says he does not go to Mass every Sunday and that he only takes Communion "when I am at peace with my conscience."

"I am an average sinner," he added, as a way of defining himself.

Asked whether he was against abortion, he told me: "I am in favor of life." And then I asked him a much more personal question:

"What happens if someone rapes your daughter and she wants to have an abortion?"

"Look" he answered, searching my eyes, "to start with, I hope that never happens, and I'm going to work very hard to prevent it from happening ... but, moving away from such a specific case (his daughter is 9 years old), I can indeed tell you that in rape cases, when a woman who has been raped decides to have an abortion, Mexican law does not punish her ... and (I) respect the law because a president's first duty is to respect the law."

From abortion we went on to talk about money. Corruption has been endemic in Mexican politics. However, Calderon said, showing me his hands, that he is going to "enter the presidency with these clean hands, and with these same clean hands I will leave the presidency."

In a quick calculation, he assured me that he and his wife have between them the equivalent of $750,000 (in funds and house) and that such capital had been "earned honestly." He also said he is the only candidate "to have made public all the details of his assets." Despite his holdings, which amount to quite a lot more than the average Mexican, he refuses to be labeled as the "candidate of the wealthy."

We ended the interview in the same way we started it _ by talking about his fight to win the Mexican presidency.
"I want, for my children, a Mexico that is a winner," he declared.

"Weren't you treated rather leniently as a child?" I asked him.

"Never," he answered. "On the contrary. They call me the disobedient son ... and I won't resign myself to leaving Mexico in the hands of demagogues and political lies. I am going to fight _ and I will win _ for a different and better Mexico for them (the future generation). That is the reason I am in this fight."

NOTE: A few months ago, I also had the opportunity to interview PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for television and for publication.