Peña Nieto's Law steamrolls through Mexico State; PRI breaks another agreement

Governor Peña Nieto claimed that PRI already had the endorsement of 92 out of Mexico State's 125 municipalities for what has been dubbed "Peña Nieto's Law," given that it blatantly favors the governors presidential ambitions. This is more than the 66 required, though reports of irregularities in this signing process abound: Luis Sánchez Jiménez, leader of the PRD branch in the state, relates that rather than being treated in the local town halls, has simply been signed by the town council leader; in one egregious case, in the PRD-run Valle del Bravo, functionaries of the government showed up at 6 in the morning at the house of the regidora, demanding that she sign some important document regarding gender equality. Only later did she discover she had just endorsed, on behalf of the Valle del Bravo town council, Peña Nieto's Law.

Peña Nieto even has the audacity to claim the electoral alliances, which his law goes a long way to impede, make out a "open fraud" to the electorate. Did he simply forget that his candidacy was a product of such an alliance (PRI-PVEM) in 2005, and that PRI and its allies controls the majority of Mexico State's municipalities due to exactly the same type of alliances?

PRD confirms that as soon as the law is promulgated, it will take it to the Supreme Court. I am glad that finally political scientists, such as Alberto Aziz Nassif in today's El Universal, are finally making themselves heard regarding the blatant opportunism and authoritarianism inherent to steamrolling these laws through in the last moment, for the sole purpose of pushing Peña Nieto's candidacy. As Aziz Nassif notes,

"The logic of adapting the electoral system to the convenience of one of the actors at the expense of the others, is quite simply an authoritarian regression."

Well put. Should there be any remaining doubts, here is PRI's latest move: While it made an explicit agreement with PAN and PRD to share the presidency of the Mexico State Congress - the presidency is a rotating office - it backtracked and reelected by simple majority PRI deputy Ernesto Nemer Álvarez as president.

Peña Nieto and his backers like to present themselves as the "new PRI," as opposed to the old prinosaurios of the past, who governed Mexico since its Revolution. If anything, Peña Nieto has demonstrated that the "new PRI" is if anything even more authoritarian minded than PRI has been for years.