Monday, January 30, 2012

Felipe Calderón

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (born August 18, 1962) is the current President of Mexico. He assumed office on December 1, 2006, and was elected for a single six-year term through 2012. He is a member of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), one of the three major Mexican political parties.

Prior to the presidency, Calderón received two masters degrees and went on to work within the PAN while it was still an important opposition party. 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 up until he resigned to run for the Presidency and secured his party's nomination. The Federal Electoral Institute's official electoral results gave Felipe Calderón the largest vote total and the presidency but the decision was contested by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Calderón's victory was confirmed on September 5, 2006 by the Federal Electoral Tribunal.

Felipe Calderón passed several reforms during his presidency, breaking through some of the gridlock faced since Mexico's transition to democracy. He would like to be remembered for building hospitals, fortifying education and legal institutions, and his environmental initiatives, but would likely and unjustly be remembered for the drug war.

Background and Family Life
Felipe Calderón was born in Michoacán. He is the youngest of five brothers and son of Carmen Hinojosa Calderón and the late Luis Calderón Vega.

His father was a co-founder of the National Action Party and an important political figure. He occupied state posts and served a term as federal deputy. Calderón spent most of his life working within the party and spent most of his free time promoting the PAN. The young Calderon was active in his father's campaigns. As a boy he distributed party pamphlets and flyers, rode PAN campaign vehicles and chanted slogans at rallies.

After growing up in Morelia, Calderón moved to Mexico City, where he received a bachelor's degree in law from the Escuela Libre de Derecho. Later, he received a master's degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and a Master of Public Administration degree in 2000 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Following his father's example, he joined the PAN. It was in the National Action Party where Calderón met his wife, Margarita Zavala, who served in Congress as a federal deputy. They have three children, María, Luis Felipe and Juan Pablo. Calderon is Roman Catholic.

From : www.wikipedia.org