MEXICO CITY _ Felipe Calderon entered his mandate through the back door. He took over his role as the new president of Mexico in a super-swift inauguration. I measured it. It lasted a bare four minutes and 43 seconds (national anthem included).

It is the shortest swearing-in of a president in modern Mexican history.

Calderon reached the floor of the Mexican Congress through a rear door, accompanied by former President Vicente Fox. They were nervous, tense, and apprehensive. They didn't know what might happen. The Presidential Guard surrounded them. In the end, amid boos and jeers, Calderon was able to take possession of office in front of Congress. But, what kind of democracy is it that forces a president to stealthily sneak into Congress through the back door? How did Mexico get to this point?
Mexico is a house divided.

The shameful images we saw in recent weeks in the Mexican Congress _ where congressmen resolved their differences with fisticuffs, kicking and pushing _ reflect the wide split that currently prevails in the country.

The pictures of that sad Mexican scenario circulated around the world.

At the same time, it implied that there's a new way to do politics in Mexico: it is by use of force, of clashes, and confrontations over and above the law, rules and the Constitution. Mexican politics has turned into unalloyed machismo: I am stronger than you are.

If Mexican congressional representatives _ who should represent the best of the nation _ do not abide by the law, and beat up, and scratch and pull each other's hair in public, what can you expect from the rest of Mexico?
No. I stand corrected: these congressmen represent the worst of Mexico.

Hope is being trampled upon throughout the country. Brawls and spats among the political class only deepen a sense of despair.

The root cause is the July 2 presidential election. The millions who voted for candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) insist there was massive electoral fraud and that Calderon is a usurper. And they won't leave him in peace. They made life impossible for him in Congress and will keep on doing it for six more years, unless the two parties reach political agreement.

In the same way the two main political forces in the country are at odds, there is also a deep divide in the streets. There was no celebration for the new president.

While Calderon was en route to the National Auditorium for his first official speech, tens of thousands PRD supporters were protesting on Mexico City's elegant central thoroughfare, Paseo de la Reforma. However, most of the country did not get to see those images: On TV, you could only see culinary shows and soap operas.

I got to speak with several of the protesters, and they were furious with the media.

"Tell the truth," they demanded. "Why aren't you showing what's happening on the streets?"
They were right: those marches were news everywhere else in the world. The headlines around the globe confirmed that the next day.

For many in the Mexican media, Lopez Obrador and his followers did not exist during those critical hours. They were ignored with the belief that, by not paying them attention, they would disappear from the public eye. But they won't disappear.

Ignoring those protests is bad journalism, and it's also dangerous.
Lopez Obrador's movement is _ according to Mexican political analyst Denise Dresser _ symptomatic of everything wrong in Mexico: 50 million people living on less than $5 a day; a citizenry that believes less and less what politicians say, or trusts in what they do; rampant crime that has touched nearly every Mexican family; huge inequality of income and power; and, above all, little hope that things will ever improve.

Faced with this perspective, millions of Mexicans will flee north during the next administration, with or without a border wall. During Fox's six-year term, more than 3 million did just that. The biggest irony is that the young people that Mexico casts out very quickly become America's best workers.
Mexican democracy, thus, is facing a test by fire.
There'll be no honeymoon for Calderon, and contrary to what many believe, he'll not have six years to fix things. He is a president who has to govern in a hurry to get results soon. The irony is that he's obliged to satisfy first the demands of those who didn't vote for him. If he doesn't do that, the whole scenario could cave in on him.

Calderon's challenge, thus, is simple: depart through the front door in 2012.