Fresh Leader: Interview With Mexico's President-Elect

MEXICO CITY, July 6, 2006 — -- Felipe Calderón's election headquarters is a rambling four-story building in the Del Valle area of Mexico City. As you'd expect, the walls are plastered with larger-than-life images of the candidate -- now Mexico's president-elect.

Our ABC News crew was ushered into a sterile second-floor boardroom to set up for Calderón's first foreign TV interview since his razor-thin victory. It was hardly surprising that he showed up two hours late, given all the pressures on his schedule and the ongoing questions about the legitimacy of his 0.6 percent margin of victory.

The final tally of the initial election recount has him fewer than 300,000 votes ahead of his leftist rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

For a president-elect, Calderón walked in with a surprisingly small entourage. He is not a tall man, but on meeting him, it is immediately clear he has a commanding presence.

Our initial conversation switched comfortably from Spanish to English and back again. But when I asked him to do the interview in English, he refused, insisting that his words were more precise in Spanish. For a man with a master's degree in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, it seemed like false modesty.

With a little persuading, he agreed to be interviewed in English with the caveat that he could switch to Spanish if he felt the need. Three-quarters of the interview was in very clear, very precise English.

CALDERÓN: I won, absolutely, positive. I won the election and everyone knows it.

KOFMAN: Do you worry about people taking to the streets, about violence, because of the uncertainty here?

CALDERÓN: No, this is a democracy. Mexico is more democratic than any other country, and the result of the election will be absolutely clear, even more clear than the election in the United States in 2000.

KOFMAN: When you look at that election from 2000 and all the acrimony that we saw in the United States, what can you learn from that situation?