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Felipe Calderón pauses for thought. His eyes stay motionless behind his neat, frameless glasses and he clasps his hands together as he struggles to find the right words.
"It is a delicate subject in Mexico," Mr Calderon, who has recently emerged as one of the leading candidates in next July's presidential election, finally tells the FT. He is talking about the possibility of allowing more private investment into Mexico's potentially rich but politically sensitive oil sector.
The issue is one of a string of politically controversial challenges that Vicente Fox, the outgoing president -- and a leader of Mr Calderon's conservative National Action Party -- has largely failed to confront during his five years in office.
Like its weak tax system, rigid labour markets and monopolistic and expensive services sector, Mexico's undercapitalised energy sector is undermining the country's long-term ability to compete. As the campaign for next July's election gets under way these issues are coming to prominence. None is more neuralgic than oil.
Pemex, the state oil company, is starved of money needed for new investment -- not least because the government relies on it for about a third of total revenue. Many experts say that unless private capital is bought in, Mexico will soon become a net oil importer.
Yet the constitution prohibits foreign involvement. For the left, state control of the oil sector is a sacred cow.
Andrós Manuel López Obrador, the leftwing candidate who has headed recent opinion polls, rejects any change. Roberto Madrazo, of the catch-all Revolutionary Institutional Party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000, skirts around the subject.
Mr Calderon, who is running for the incumbent centre-right PAN party, hints at his plans. He says that oil exploration and production "must remain exclusively in the hands of Pemex". But he also says "we need complementary investment to that of the state".
He does not reject "the possibility of exploring strategic alliances [with private capital] in areas where Pemex has neither the technology nor the financing to make viable the expansion of its projects, for example, in exploration in deep water".
That is an important point. Putentially, Mexico has 46.9bn of barrels of reserves. Yet most of them lie more than 3,000m beneath the sea -- a depth requiring resources, technology and, above all, knowhow that the state lacks.
Asked whether he would consider modifying the constitution to facilitate such alliances, Mr Calderon said: "It is a possibility."
The candidate displays the same caution on competition, another vital but delicate subject. Vast and powerful business groups dominate Mexico's corporate landscape but many believe the resulting inonopolies -- and the high prices they charge for product and services -- have become one of the main barriers to competitiveness.
Mr Calderon says the answer lies in strengthening independent regulators. "We have to make them more independent and to give them more teeth in their work when dealing with very powerful corporations", he says. "Monopolies damage competition."
Yet he is less forthright about specific interests. In telecommunications, which is dominated by Telmex, owned by Carlos Slim, the richest man in Latin America, he simply says that competition is "already taking place" - though he admits new companies have difficulties entering the market.
Political analysts nave long pointed out that one of Mr Calderon's potential weaknesses is being associated with current government of Mr Fox, which has fallen woefully short of expectations.
Mr Calderon pauses when asked to make a judgment. On balance he says the government's achievements "are greater than the deficiencies and that is going to be positive for me".
One such achievement is economic stability. Mr Fox "is the first president in more than half a century who has not increased Mexico's debts by a single cent". Not only that, "he has improved the foreign debt profile and has lowered it in real terms".
Another is combating poverty. "Mexico reduced extreme poverty, of those living on less than a dollar a day, by 25 per cent. That is something that only Chile has managed to do."
Even so, Mr Calderon says it would be wrong to think of him as the candidate of continuity. "This is not about continuity or change. It is simple: we have to continue the good things and correct the deficiencies."
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