WORST LADY?

Soft music and idle chatter fill the air in the small but classy restaurant in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood. Suddenly, the music stops and the room falls silent. A policeman appears, bugle in hand. Blasting a painfully atonal fanfare, he announces the arrival of the First Lady of Mexico. As the audience breaks into applause, a petite, sharply dressed woman enters the room... he-e-e-e-e-r-e's Marta! She walks to center stage to address the crowd, but her triumphal entrance is marred by a critical miscalculation: she cannot see over the podium. So begins the stand-up comedy routine of Raquel Pankowsky, impersonator extraordinaire of Marta Sahagun de Fox.

With over-the-top haughtiness and a faintly ludicrous lisp that muddles half her words, Marta Segun, the First Lady's satirical alter ego, launches into a whirlwind monologue, stopping to examine every point of her melodramatic life. In between musical interludes and lofty allusions to her patriotism, "Marta" delves into her favorite subjects--the poor, children, women. She also mentions her charity "Robamos Mexico... uh, Vamos Mexico," deftly correcting the name from "Let's Rob Mexico" to "Let's Go Mexico." The crowd, numbering close to 100, bursts into laughter, for Segun is lampooning the very traits that exasperate so many Mexicans, especially the well-to-do types watching the show, about their real-life First Lady.

The crowds may cheer Pankowsky's vaudeville persona, but the real Marta Sahagun de Fox is a harder nut to crack. In recent weeks Martita, as she is widely known, has taken center stage in a blistering political scandal that has shaken Vicente Fox's ineffectual administration. More than halfway through his six-year term, Fox hasn't implemented any of the substantive reforms he promised during his 2000 presidential-election campaign. Nor is he likely to: with two years left before the next presidential balloting, Fox is struggling to maintain control over a rapidly fragmenting government and a divided political base wary of his wife's apparent presidential ambitions.

The crisis has been made worse in recent weeks by widespread unease over Marta's high-profile role in policymaking. In the past month two cabinet-level officials have left Fox's government for reasons directly related to Marta. Meantime Fox's center-right National Action Party (PAN) has been beset with charges of corruption. Marta herself is the subject of a congressional probe of financial irregularities involving her charitable organization, Vamos Mexico. And the hopes that Fox embodied when he unseated the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have almost entirely vanished, replaced with political paralysis and fear. "This is the most important scandal Fox has faced," says Argentine author Olga Wornat, who wrote a biography of the First Lady last year.

Fox's latest problem erupted last week when his chief of staff and spokesman, Alfonso Durazo, resigned, leaving behind a 19-page letter filled with innuendo and accusation. In it, Durazo alleged that Fox was using his office to help launch Marta's presidential campaign. He accused the First Couple of attempting to establish a "dynasty" in the presidential palace of Los Pinos. The charge was particularly damaging because Mexicans remember--and resent--the PRI's old method of allowing presidents to handpick their successors. Durazo accused Fox and his wife of committing the "original sin" of Mexican politics by reverting to that strategy. In scathing language that sources close to Durazo say was toned down considerably before it was published, the outgoing aide said Mexico wasn't ready "to have a president leave the presidency to his wife." He ended the letter with an ominous message meant for the First Lady: "I promise that we are going to have a candidate for the presidency of the republic, and it is not going to be Marta." Ironically, it was Marta who recommended that Fox hire Durazo in 2000, when he was little more than an outcast PRI operative.

For months now Fox has been trying to deflect questions about his wife's political aspirations. In March he categorically denied she would seek any political office and said the two were planning to retire to their ranch in Guanajuato, where they would care for the poor and educate young children. Two days later Marta appeared to contradict her husband when she declared she hadn't yet ruled out a presidential run and was sure Fox would support her, whatever she decided to do. Last week, in the wake of Durazo's resignation, Fox interrupted a press conference he was holding in Brazil to send a calming message back home. "Mexico is in good, responsible hands," a visibly frustrated Fox told reporters.