The International Press Institute (IPI) today voiced concern over a Mexican radio station’s firing of a journalist after she said on air that Mexican President Felipe Calderon should respond to allegations that he is an alcoholic.

Well-known radio and TV journalist Carmen Aristegui was fired by MVS radio on Monday after she refused to apologize for the statement she made Friday.

The station said Aristegui violated its code of ethics by “broadcasting rumour as news,” but she said in a press conference yesterday the station – which is waiting to renew its broadcast license – fired her under pressure from the president’s office.

“An act like this is only imaginable in a dictatorship that nobody wants for Mexico: punishing for opining or questioning rulers,” she said.

Calderon’s office denied involvement.

Aristegui on Friday called for Calderon to respond after a deputy from a rival party unfurled a banner in Congress alleging that the president had alcohol problems.
Calderon’s private secretary, Roberto Gil Zuarth, yesterday called the allegation “unfounded”, citing the president’s pace of work as “the best proof of his good health, his physical strength and integrity”.