Felipe Calderón, Mexican lawyer and politician, 56th President of Mexico
Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa RE CYC GCB (Spanish pronunciation: [feˈlipe kaldeˈɾon] (listen); born 19 August 1962) is a Mexican politician who served as the 63rd President of Mexico from 1 December 2006 to 30 November 2012 and Secretary of Energy during the presidency of Vicente Fox between 2003 and 2004. He was a member of the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) for 30 years before quitting the party in November 2018.
His father was Luis Calderón Vega, one of the founders of the PAN and one of its most prominent members; Felipe himself joined the party in the 1980s. Prior to becoming President, Calderón received two master's degrees and worked within the PAN when it was still an opposition party during the PRI regime. Calderón served as National President of the party, Federal Deputy, and Secretary of Energy in Vicente Fox's cabinet. He served in the cabinet of the previous administration until he resigned to run for the presidency and secured his party's nomination.
In the 2006 presidential election, he ran as the PAN candidate. After a heated campaign and a controversial electoral process, the Federal Electoral Institute's official results gave Calderón a tiny lead (less than 1% of advantage of the total votes) above PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. While López Obrador and the PRD disputed the results and called for a complete recount of the votes, Calderón's victory was confirmed months later on 5 September by the Federal Electoral Tribunal. Calderón's inauguration ceremony at the Congress of the Union was tense and lasted less than five minutes, as he only recited the oath of office while the PRD legislators shouted in protest against the alleged electoral fraud, and afterwards he quickly left the building for security reasons as some of the legislators engaged in violent brawls.His presidency was marked by his declaration of war against the drug cartels only ten days after taking office; this was considered by most observers as an immediate strategy to gain popular legitimacy for the new President after the convoluted elections. Calderón sanctioned Operation Michoacán, the first large-scale deployment of federal troops against the drug cartels. By the end of his administration, the official number of deaths related to the drug war was at least 60,000. The murder rate skyrocketed during his presidency parallel to that of the ignition of the drug war, with the murder rate peaking in 2010 and decreasing during the last two years of his term. The main architect of the drug war, Genaro García Luna (who was Secretary of Public Security during the entirety of Calderón's administration), was arrested in the United States in 2019 due to alleged links with the Sinaloa cartel.Calderón's term was also marked by the Great Recession, which resulted in a 4.7% drop in gross domestic product for 2009. An economic recovery the following year resulted in growth of 5.11%. In 2007, Calderón established ProMéxico, a public trust fund that promotes Mexico's interests in international trade and investment. The total foreign direct investment during Calderón's presidency was US$70.494 billion. As a result of the countercyclical package passed in 2009 to address the effects of the global recession, the national debt increased from 22.2% to 35% of GDP by December 2012. The poverty rate increased from 43 to 46%.Other significant events during Calderón's presidency include the 2008 passing of criminal justice reforms (fully implemented in 2016), the 2009 flu pandemic, the 2010 establishment of the Agencia Espacial Mexicana, the 2011 founding of the Pacific Alliance and the achievement of universal healthcare through Seguro Popular (passed under the Fox administration) in 2012. Under the Calderón administration sixteen new Protected Natural Areas were created. He began a one-year fellowship at John F. Kennedy School of Government in January 2013, and returned to Mexico following the end of his tenure.
His wife Margarita Zavala was briefly an independent candidate in the 2018 presidential election before dropping out on 17 May.After three decades of being a PAN member, he left the party on 11 November 2018 to found his own party, Free Mexico (México Libre), which sought to debut in the 2021 legislative elections. Its registration was rejected by the INE as the "origin of cash contributions was not accredited, violating principles in terms of oversight, transparency and accountability."