Mexican Supreme Court: "Ley Peña"/Peña Nieto's Law is constitutional

The Mexican Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the last-minute and unilaterals change to Mexico State's electoral codes, known popularly as "Ley Peña" or Peña Nieto's Law," are nonetheless constitutional. The Court didn't have much leeway; earlier, it had ruled that a similar law passed in Guanajuato was indeed legal.

Ley Peña may not breach the constitution, but it certainly does with regards to the spirit of the law: It was introduced, steamrolled by PRI and its allies with no consultation with the opposition, then passed in an amazing hurry in the required 2/3 of Mexico's municipalities. Every single aspect of the law blatantly favors the PRI, and PRD and its allies had also pointed out, in their complaints, massive irregularities in particularly the ratification part of the process, but their arguments were rejected.

The Supreme Court decision is disappointing: Mexico's young democracy, increasingly under attack on the state levels, received no protection from the country's highest constitutional authority.

Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, to be sure, gloated over the decision, arguing with no apparent shame that "it makes it clear that the reform was made by the social representation of the state of Mexico." Please.

It's on: COP16 in Cancún, Mexico

COP 16/CMP6, the 16th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, opens today in Cancún.
As Gancho articulately notes, Calderón has showed a concern for the environment that far surpasses any other rightwing politician north, and possibly also south, of the border, and deserves credit for it, although, as today's editorial in El Universal points out, quite a few of the government's supposed accomplishments in matters of the environment, such as its ProÁrbol tree planting program, and its promotion of energy-saving light bulbs, are are far from unqualified successes.

Still: COP 16 is on in Cancún; may Calderón use the occasion for all it is worth.

Quote of the day: Onésimo Cepeda, of superman strength

Onésimo Cepeda, the discredited bishop of Ecapec who supposedly suffered a cardiac arrest or heart attack or whatever recently, in front of 3000 members of his congregation yesterday, holding mass:
(this is nothing for a man of Cepeda's caliber - a few days ago he was partying at a restaurant)

"Know that your bishop really was sick, that he had a heart attack, that God saved me from it and still will not let me fall into the hands of injustice from it and still do not fall into the hands of injustice, but I hope to fall into the hands of justice and that you will still have a bishop for some time.

The fact that the bishop has to reiterate and insist, during mass, to his congregation that he really, really had a heart attack... makes further comment unnecessary.

Why the Mexican left may lose Mexico City in 2012

A couple of weeks ago, a presentation was held in Mexico for a new party called "Partido de la Ciudad" in Mexico City, which ostensibly seek to present a new "leftwing" alternative to PRD. The party is founded by ex-PRD members René Arce - still a senator for the party - and Víctor Hugo Círigo, who until 2009 headed the Mexico City legislature. The party is not yet officially registered and not much exists beyond its name, but at is "premiere," if one may, in a meeting held Nov. 14, the party attracted ex Partido Socialdemócrata (PSD members such as Alberto Begné, Robles Maloof and Adrián Lajous, but also in front row, notably panistas such as the nefarious PAN Senator Federico Döring, as well as Minerva Hernández, now a senator for PAN after she unceremoniously dumped the party that had here elected, PRD, and former national PRD deputy Ruth Zavalea, who is now campaigning for the PRI in Guerrero.

PSD, for one, is now extinct as a national party, but some groupings exist on the state level. However, its former national leader, Jorge Carlos Díaz, just announced that the new Partido de la Ciudady would be formed only in the Federal District, and will have a "progressive" profile, above all in favor of legalization of "all drugs."

The idea that Mexico City needs another socially liberal "progressive" party to further this agenda in Mexico City is quite suspect. The party will obviously sap votes from the PRD, and may at best, should it be registered, get a few seats in the Mexico City legislature, but at worst, should it present its own candidate for Mexico City mayor, provoke a split in the left that may allow a PAN or even PRI candidate for winning the 2012 elections. The PRD in Mexico City is, with the exception of the more socially conservatives backing AMLO's faction, a highly liberal party, socially speaking, having successfully pushed gay and women rights, including gay marriage and abortion rights. Many also favor decriminalization or even legalization. What are the true motives behind this new party?

Also, yesterday it was reported that Izquierda Democrática Nacional (IDN), the heavily clientelist and "social-movement"-based faction of the PRD led by René Bejarano (he of the 2004 dollar-stuffing fame), announced it will launch its own candidate for Mexico City mayor 2012.

Current mayor Ebrard will need the backing of the clientelist structures in IDN to have his successor elected, as well as to back his 2012 bid, and this may all simply be some posturing part of the bargaining process - it will not come for free - yet could also possibly bye  a step toward creating its own party based on IDN and Bejarano's own Movimiento Nacional por la Esperanza (MNE)

(Bejarano, notably, was expelled from the PRD and when I asked his wife Dolores Padierna a while back if he was involved in any PRD activities, she brushed it off. Padierna is nominally the head of IDN, but it is obvious that Bejarano pulls the threads. Of note, the IDN is pushing for Dolores Padierna to be a senatorial candidate for the PRD(!) - she is such a controversial, and unfit, choice that even AMLO in 2006 vetoed this.)

While the two groupings - the "Partido de la Ciudad" by the Cïrigo/Arce brothers, and the IDN/MNE by the Bejaranos - may have different motivations, they may well succeed in tearing the PRD and the left apart in Mexico City, and hand it to the opposition. It seems pertinent to ask: Is this also their goal?

Only 44% think 2012 elections will be fair: El Universal

According to an El Universal poll, only 44 percent of Mexicans believe the 2012 elections will be clean. A majority of Mexicans, in other words, don't trust the IFE. While I can't find any more details on the poll itself, this number is disturbingly high. Whether to blame IFE itself, or people like AMLO who has toured the country constantly discrediting Mexico's institutions... that's another story.

Amalia´s "anomalies": Corruption and fraud charges against former Zacatecas governor Garcìa Medina

A "political persecution" and "witch hunt" - or the uncovering of massive corruption, embezzlement and overspending? Mere days after Miguel Alonso Reyes assumed the governorship of Zacatecas in September, his finance secretary informed Amalia García's government had left a debt of at least 2 billion pesos. Now, two months later, the state's financial control organ appears to have uncovered a range of financial irregularities in her 6-year Zacatecas administration, with more than 1.5 billion pesos "diverted" or simply lost. This includes: million-peso contracts that weren't properly tendered, falsified invoices, manipulated social programs, irregular personal loans, illegally contracted debt, and, to add, spending millions of dollars on hiring popular artists to perform, such as paying 17 million pesos to Plácido Domingo, 15 millones to Alejandro Sanz, and 9 million pesos to Juan Gabriel - this, in one of Mexico's poorest states. Amelia Garcìa in response accused the new Alonso Reyes government of engaging in a "witch hunt" and "political lynching," and mere incompetence in the revision of the accounts.

"The offensive that you and your government has started is without merit and is motivated by political reasons. To these accusation I and those who were my staff have decided to ive a timely response, yet it is clear that along with acting in bad faith, there is great inability to investigate with professionalism the information that was provided with the handover of the administration.

Notably, though, there were no direct responses to the specific accusations. Moreover, further comments said in defense were hardly ingenious: Medina, in a PRD press conference, suggested the new government, was only trying to cover up its own incompetence and the growing violence in the state - a bit of a far stretch given that the Alonso Reyes only took over two months ago, when crime had long been on the rise. Her daughter, Senator Claudia Corichi, for her part meekly rejected accusations of her incompetence as head of the state DIF, because her position was merely "honorary."

What will come of these accusations, if they are indeed true? Governor Miguel Alonso Reyes has certainly backed up the control organ's investigation, and already before the preliminary results  - which so far only cover about 2 percent of the state's total budget - had been released, the  former director of investigations of the state attorney general's office was detained for embezzlement, although Guillermo Huízar Carranza, the state comptroller, says the government is so far not accusing Garcìa directly of any wrongdoing. Moreover, as El Universal points out in an editorial, such "housecleanings" only seem to be done whenever there is a change of parties in the state government, more than hinting at a political tinge to the investigation. Certainly, many of the new functionaries, as well as the governor himself, are very close to Garcìa's predecessor, Ricardo Monreal Ávila, who while then technically of the same party - Monreal was a lifelong PRI member until he failed to get the gubernatorial nomination, and then joined the PRD (he dumped it for the PT later) - soon became a bitter enemy of the Garcìa administration.

Yet Garcìa hasn't herself exactly inspired confidence by appointing close members of the family to important posts. And while she appears knee-deep in serious corruption charges, she still took the time off for a final offensive at PRD Senator Tomás Torres Mercado, managing to have the Zacatecas senator expelled from the PRD for having backed the campaign of Alonso Reyes, a former PRD member himself. Whichever the nature of the recent investigations - a political witch hunt, revenge, or actually the uncovering of massive wrongdoing - this should really be the least of her concerns.

Guerrero: Ruth Zavaleta joins the gubernatorial campaign of PRI's Manuel Añorve Baños

In some ways it´s quite a shocker, in others not: Ruth Zavaleta, former federal deputy of the PRD, has now started appearing in campaign events for Manuel Añorve Baños in Guerrero and declared she supports his candidacy for governor. Notably, Zavaleta was the former president of the Chamber of Deputies 2007-2008, and a federal deputy for the 2006-2009 period. While she officially resigned from the PRD in 2009, it is nonetheless quite a surprise to see that Zavaleta is backing PRI, the nemesis of her old party.

Yet Zavaleta is from Guerrero, and remains close to Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected as the PRD's candidate in 2005 yet frequently clashed with the party, and who in recent months have launched vicious attacks on the PRD when he failed to impose his favored candidate to succeed him. She has, in essence, simply followed his path.

The case of Zavaleta is yet another sad example of the excessive opportunism within Mexican parties, of which the PRD is hardly exempt: The past months have seen the resignation of Senator Minerva Hernández Ramos from the party to join PAN, and in Baja California Sur, Marcos Covarrubias was long a front runner for the gubernatorial nomination, yet when he failed to achieve it he as well joined PAN.

Yet Zavaleta was no opportunistic newcomer to the PRD: She was one of the original party founders of the PRD, and served as borough/delegation chief in Mexico City in Venustiano Carranza before she became a federal deputy. This in contrast to e.g. Zeferino Torreblanca, who never joined the party in the first place, and whose policies as governor resembled little of the PRD's agenda. That Zavaleta would now join the candidacy of a man who is about as far removed from a leftist agenda as possible, Manuel Añorve Baños, suggests that whatever political convictions she might once have harbored, they were easily discarded on the altar of expediency and opportunism.

What is AMLO really doing? Photos like this makes one wonder

Having gone to great pains to identify Enrique Peña with reviled former President Carlos Salinas, showing at every possible occasion a blown up poster of the two together, it was more than a bit ironic that merely days after having been designated his candidate, pictures of a Yeidckol Polevnsky with Peña Nieto from an event this Monday would hit newspapers today. 

From La Jornada

A damning indictment of PAN leadership contenders: Debate "not necessary"

It's outright embarrassing, and speaks volumes of the low caliber of most of the contenders for PAN's party presidency: Cecilia Romero informed that she and the four other candidates had decided, against earlier promises, to simply skip any debates: "It was a joint decision and it is now out of the question ... we are not enemies, we are not adversaries, we are contenders in the same way."

So the PAN leadership succession is therefore, as critics have complained, merely a contest between personalities and/or based on whether one professes unquestioning loyalty or not to Calderón, rather than between candidates with well thought-out plans and visions for what they want the role of PAN to be?

I have defended and will continue defending PAN's way in which they choose their party president - by a vote in the national council rather than a debilitating mass-base election - yet to not even meet for a mere debate really serve to undermine the very point of holding this practice at all, and threatens to expose the "election" as a mere sham.

Bishop Onésimo Cepeda's convenient heart attack may save him from jail

After spending a few days in the hospital, Onésimo Cepeda, bishop of Ecatepec in Mexico State and a very close ally of Gover Enrique Peña Nieto, was released. He is facing charges of involvement in a huge fraud of valuable paintings worth an estimated $130 million - dollars, that is.

Yet given a reform to the article 55 of penal code in Mexico City in 2004, which stipulates that those over 70 with health problems may be placed in "house arrest" rather than in the dock, the bishop's heartattack - if there ever was one - may have saved him from prison. His own sister, Lily Cepeda, angrily denounced her bishop brother, claiming he faked it as a ploy to avoid prison or evoke sympathy.

When it comes to the more wacky and sinister members of the Mexican clergy such as Onésimo Cepeda, this would be less than shocking.

PAN expert Soledad Loaeza receives Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in social sciences

For students of PAN, Soledad Loaeza is a well-known name; her 1999 El Partido Acción Nacional: La Larga Marcha is a classic. Loaeza is out with a new book,  Acción Nacional, el apetito y las responsabilidades del triunfo, published by Colegio de México, her workplace.

It was just announced that she won the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in the social sciences. In that regard she offered a few thoughts on the PAN. While one cannot expect that the party would not fall into any of the nefarious practices established by PRI and its 71-year rule of Mexico, Loeaza notes,

"We can, however, demand honesty and we can complain that they have fallen into corruption very similar ore even worse that we complained about with the priístas, with regards to handouts, with extravagant expenditures of public officials. One of the main criticism that PAN historically directed to the PRI is that they had a very large administrative apparatus, that they spent too much on running public costs, that the salaries were stratospheric, and utterly unjustified. Yet now PAN has fallen into the same thing."

It's a damning indictment that sadly sums up the behavior of a great deal of the party's cadres in its decade of holding federal power.

Enoé Uranga: Jalisco governor suffers from "grave problem of homophobia"

Federal deputy of the PRD, said it best: Governor  Emilio González Márquez of Jalisco is "suffering a grave problem of homophobia," and offered to facilitate a training course for the governor with CONAPRED, the Mexican National Council to Prevent Discrimination, in response to the Jalisco governor's slurs and sponsoring of "gay conversion" events.

PRI's  Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, president of the Chamber of Deputies, simply stated, "One cannot spend public money on whims," and said he will push for a federal audit by the Auditoría Superior de la Federación to determine the extent to which the Jalisco government has abused public funds for these and other events, which has made Governor Emilio González the laughing stock of the nation.

180 degree turn: Yeidckol Polevnsky now denies being candidate

The sharp backlash to AMLO's "appointment" of Yeidckol Polevnsky as his candidate for governor in Mexico State is causing quite a turmoil in the AMLO camp: Now, Polevnsky  herself has made a pirouette and announced she is only a "proposal" and not a "candidate" - in sharp contrast to her stringent declarations the past couple of days where she demanded that the PRD line up behind her candidacy.

More quotes on Yeidckol Polevnsky: Backlash continues

From the Mexico State branch of the PT, Sergio Velarde:
"W have nothing against the senator and it is nothing personal, but she has no roots nor identity with the left in Mexico State"

From the Mexico state branch of Convergencia, Daniel Ríos:
"We are against the manner in which the designation was made, and we do not want to walk together with  Yeidckol, because when she ran [in 2004-5] she showed a total disregard of the state, and six years later we see who has done nothing for the entity, so now we have to be more cautious in the designation."

Expect AMLO to dismiss the reaction to his dedazo as the work of Salinas.

Yet the best quote goes to Yeidckol Polevnsky herself, in more than a bit of unintended irony:
"The PRD will need to back me because one cannot impose on the party bases an alliance that nobody wants." Indeed one can't.

Excellent El Universal editorial on "gay conversions"

The Mexican media is finally giving more attention to the ludicrous and illegal practices of the Jalisco state government, led by the perennial drunkard Governor Emilio González Márquez, to help sponsor a "conference" of charlatans that purport to "heal" and "convert" gays - as if it were a mere matter of choice, or worse yet, a disease to be healed from. Jalisco's secretary of government, the crackpot Fernando Guzmán Pérez Peláez, has been accused of directly sponsoring the event with state funds, and is finally the subject of a criminal complaint filed by the state congress for diverting public money for a religious event. The case is front page news on El Universal today, which it rightfully should be.

In its editorial, the newspaper writes:

"Its been 30 years ago that homosexuality was taken off  the  list of diseases of the World Health Organization. Almost 10 years ago, the Mexican Constitution embodied in its Article 1, paragraph 3, the non-discrimination clause on grounds of sexual preference. The Supreme Court already upheld the same-sex marriages despite resistance from the government of Jalisco. From what argument can one rationally and reasonably prescribe as  'cure' a procedure that contravenes any universal human rights and verifiable knowledge?"

El Universal is far too generous. At this point in his tenure, no one should attribute any rationality or reason motivating the behavior of Emilio González Márquez's government. It lost control of the state house in 2009 due to his increasingly erratic behavior and poor job performance; it is now time to be held accountable to the law.

"Me encantaría Lázaro": Ebrard wants Lázaro Cárdenas as new PRD president

While Ebrard is walking carefully not to step on the toes of the current PRD leadership of Jésus Ortega and his social-democratic Nueva Izquierda faction, the Mexico City mayor expressed support for Lázaro Cárdenas Batel as new PRD president when Ortega steps down in March 2011.

A few quick comments:
1) Cárdenas Batel is hardly a controversial choice, and Ebrard says he expects AMLO to back him as well. I doubt this - AMLO will reject anyone he cannot control, and moreover has poor relations with his one-time mentor Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Lázaro's father. AMLO's candidate has long been Dolores Padierna; he will only support Làzaro if the latter explicitly opposes the PAN-PRD alliances.
2) Ortega was elected March 2008 yet due to the disastrous internal election, had to wait until the end of 2008 to take up office. Stepping down in March 2011is a concession, but Ortega also wants to avoid yet another ruinous internal party fight so close to the 2012 presidential elections
3) Because of this, it is crucial that no mass-election by the party base is held to elect PRD's new president. Every one of these elections has been a disaster; the PRD should follow PAN's example and elected the president through a vote by the national council of the party, which has in turn been elected by the party base. Alternatively - and a better alternative yet - is for Lázaro to become a "unity" candidate, which is what PRI is doing, and what Ebrard is seemingly eager to achieve. This would involve quite  few concessions to many groups involved, but is a viable option, which include Cuauhtémoc dropping his 2012 ambitions and instead aiming for Lázaro in 2018.

AMLO's dedazo and brazen lie fractures his own coalition

AMLO's top-down heavily personalistic style has finally caught up with him: He is facing a significant rebellion even within his own and most loyal ranks, given his imposition of Yeidckol Polevnsky as "his" candidate for Mexico State in the upcoming gubernatorial election.

According to Daniel Ríos Ávila of Convergencia, AMLO had during his recent "Loyalty Tours" in Mexico State promised a poll/consultation/primary where leaders of Convergencia, PT, and PRD loyal to AMLO would together come up with the best-positioned candidate. This was to take place in January. Yet merely three days after the mass meeting in Toluca where AMLO concluded his 125-municipality tour, it was announced that he had already settled on Yeidckol Polevnsky after conducting his own "poll," apparently. Absolutely no figures have been released here; AMLO's allies were simply to take him on his word, which he already broke by his unilateral decision and appoint Yeidckol Polevnsky in the worst PRI-style dedazo - a party, to recall, that AMLO had belonged to his entire life until well after the infamous July 7, 1988 election, when Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas convinced him to finally ditch his old party.

Now, key allies such as Senator Óscar González says that the Partido del Trabajo (PT) "do not regard well the candidacy of Yeidckol Polevnsky; it doesn't satisfy us."

Leader of the Mexico State PRD, Luis Sánchez Jiménez, points out that, irony of ironies, Polevnsky, a non-party business woman, has long expressed deep admiration for Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, and recalls that she already had her go in 2005, when she came in a poor third, even after PAN.

As Sánchez Jiménez, a popular politician who himself would be a terrific choice as candidate, notes:

We do not accept nor will accept her as a candidate ... we are not obliged to accept impositions of her or anyone; we do not accept the authoritarianism of the former head of [Mexico City]," meaning AMLO.

It seems that many of AMLO's own followers are also reaching the same conclusion.

The deal that likely sealed 2012: Enrique Peña Nieto-Elba Esther Gordillo appears consecrated

The occasion was the inauguration of new branch headquarters of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), the teachers union headed by Elba Esther Gordillo. Indeed, the SNTE branch, Sección 36 in was personally headed by Gordillo more than 30 years ago, before she became national leader of SNTE in 1989. (For an excellent run-down of Gordillo, see this Economist article).

The key here is location. Section 36 is located in Ecatepec, Mexico State, and among the three thousands guests were none other than Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, who also held a speech lauding Gordillo and her "goodwill."

Gordillo's contribution to the lovefest: "Our appreciation and gratitude to your government and our hope that we are able to make dreams reality."

She also used the occasion to announce the creation of yet another "evaluation system" of teachers, which will likely come to nothing: Gordillo and her ilk have fought tooth and nail against any serious objective means of evaluating teachers, many of whom are of an abysmally poor quality, yet who prove loyal foot soldiers during election time, where they may contribute their vote but also crucially be used to guard ballot boxes and polling stations.

SNTE remains a formidable force: It is the largest union in Latin America, and one of the largest world wide, with probably at least 1.4 million members. While Gordillo is known for turning her cape to the wind at short notice, this event seem to signify that she has now lined up fully behind Enrique Peña Nieto's 2012 presidential candidacy. With this added support, it will be hard to stop him.

Gael Garcia: A wonderful actor and human being takes up cause of migrants

One of Mexico's top actors, Gael García Bernal, is doing his part to highlight the plight of migrants in Mexico in four short films made in cooperation with Amnesty International. They can be seen at:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/watch-invisibles-2010-11-02

Great profile of Governor Emilio González Márquez of Jalisco

A highly recommended read: Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez of El Universal profiles the ultra-conservative, ultra-polarizing, ultra-incompetent, ultra-drunk Governor of Jalisco, Emilio González Márquez, and  his political trajectory.

The title of the article: "The Tracing of an Ultra-Conservative Government."

What does it take to get fired from the Chamber of Deputies? Jorge Kahwagi Macari

La Jornada reports on the very poor attendance rate of particularly PRI, PAN, and PANAL deputies in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. None beats Jorge Kahwagi Macari: The boxer-media celebrity-cum politician, who is also the nominal head of Elba Esther Gordillo's Partido Nueva Alianza (PANAL), a party based on her iron-fisted control of the SNTE teachers union, in the current congressional period has attended 1 - one - out of 26 session! At the single session he did attend, he merely registered in the electronic registry and then took off. All the while, Kahwagi has continued to draw his legislator's salary and the many perks that come with being a national deputy. To add, in the previous session, from February to March, he also only showed up to register electronically, and then skipped the 30(!) other sessions held.

With such behavior, is it any wonder that Mexico's national legislators are held in low esteem?

Amidst centennial revolutionary celebrations, Cárdenas calls for "grand collective"

Appearing as a speaker next to Marcelo Ebrard at the newly restored Monument to the Revolution, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas denounced the "administrations of the last thirty years," and called for a new progressive movement - "a grand collective" - for change: "This is the right time to start working."

One may point out to Cárdenas that one movement for change already exists - AMLO's "Legitimate Government," which has anywhere from 2 to 5 million members, according to its own estimates, though it it is pretty clear that PRD's founder and three-time presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is well aware of AMLO's movement - I asked him what he thought about it a while back, and while the answer was in his typically vague cardenasspeak, he did not appear impressed by it, and said he had no idea what AMLO wanted with it - hardly a ringing endorsement of the mass movement of his one-time protégé and then internal party rival.

I've said it before: Don't exclude another Cárdenas 2012 candidacy. While his son Lázaro has certainly been mentioned, the old man might very well step back into the ring.

Ex-Governor Silverio Cavazos Ceballos of Colima murdered

The most high-profile political assassination yet in 2010: Former governor Silverio Cavazos Ceballos was gunned down outside his home in Colima, and died shortly thereafter.
Cavazos Ceballos served as the PRI governor of Colima 2005-2009.

AMLO's logic, seemingly increasingly removed from reality

It is increasingly harder to follow AMLO's tortous logic, which if taken at face value is hardly logical at all.
Consider the statements he made yesterday regarding the recent surprise announcement that Yeidckol Polevnsky will be his candidate for governor in Mexico State: "They will not agree to this, those who have as candidate Peña Nieto for the presidency of the republic, that is obvious."

That is obvious? AMLO is presenting his own candidate, before any other party has done this, a candidate that lost badly in 2005 and came in third after PRI and PAN, at the height of AMLO's popularity, and the only thing "obvious" is that his candidate will split the vote for the left - PRD will present its candidate, likely with PAN - thereby ensuring the victory of Governor Enrique Peña Nieto's successor.

Does anyone in their right mind think that Peña Nieto is opposed to Yeidckol Polevnsky's candidacy? It is hard for me to believe AMLO truly does so, but if he does:  Estaría mal de sus facultades mentales. That is obvious.

The Vatican's dangerous hypocrisy: Defending hate speech as "free speech"

It defies belief in its brazen distortion of reality, and I truly wonder if the Mexican clergy truly believes its own  nonsense. According to Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, part of a delegation of visiting Mexican clergy to the Vatian, the lawsuit of Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, and other criticism of the church, "constitute an attack on religious freedom." In the Vatican meeting, the cardinal said,

"one complained that the bishops can not speak out against the homosexuality laws, the adoption of children by homosexuals and gay marriage because one says that they are against the government."

To recall: Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, the most active of clergy "speaking out," has directly accused Ebrard of bribing the Supreme Court, and has viciously denounced gays, including calling them "faggots" in a press conference. To make this an issue of "free speech" is utter nonsense, and the church knows this.

Yes, it is true that the Mexican Constitution explicitly state that clergy can not interfere directly in politics such as calling for people to vote for a party - or against it. This has not, of course, prevented them from doing this - in 2000, bishop Onésimo Cepeda actively favored the PRI, and others, such as Hugo Valdemar, has called on catholics not to vote on a "fascist party" such as the PRD.

Even so: Exactly why is it that the Mexican Constitution is so seemingly curbing of "free speech"? Because the Catholic Church as an institution up until recent years fought against every initiative to change the status quo toward a more free, democratic and just society: From the Independence wars two hundred years ago and onward, in every major events of the 19th and 20th century, the church has stood on the wrong side of history.

Speaking of events the Church opposed tooth and nail, hundred years ago, to this day:
VIVA MÉXICO, CABRONES! TIERRA Y LIBERTAD!

It's the elections, stupid: 55% rise in social spending proposed in Mexico State

For a state that still holds the highest number of people in poverty - seven million - that Mexico State should want to increase its social spending should on the surface be good news - hadn't it been for the timing and unprecedented jump in the suggested spending for next year's budget, which strongly hints at naked electioneering: In 2011, the successor to itting Governor Enrique Peña Nieto will be elected. What better way to buy some support than to crank up social spending 55 (!) percent?

Raúl Murrieta Cummings, Peña Nieto's secretary of finanze, handed over the proposed fiscal package for 2011 to the state congress that includes a whopping 55 percent jump, from 2 to 3 billion pesos, in social spending. 

Also of note: The state Electoral Institute (IEEM), on which the Ley Peña drastically reduced the representation of opposition parties - while before all parties participating in a coalition would have their own representative, now they will only have one for the entire coalition - has been proposed a budget of 1.637 million pesos - a 224 percent jump from the current year. 

Also of note: Of the recently approved federal budget, Mexico State will receive 118.441 billion pesos. Mexico State will only bring in 15.563 billion of their own money, or 12.8 of their total budget. It is quite stunning that despite the diversification in Mexico State's economy, more than 87% of its income still come from the federal government. 

There are persistent rumors of a massive budget hole cover-up in Mexico State; should the opposition against all odds win against the PRI candidate in 2011, we might be in for some interesting reading on how much and where Peña Nieto spent the state's money. 

Yeidckol Polevnsky is the chosen - emphasis on chosen - one

So Yeidckol it is. Less than a week after AMLO declared that the best candidate for Mexico State would be chosen by a poll, AMLO's collaborators let it be known that Yeidckol Polevnsky has been chosen to be AMLO's candidate for Mexico State governor. I've offered some opinions on Polevnsky before and her chances, which are minuscule. Here I will only make three comments:

1) The PAN and the PRD in Mexico State, as well as on the national level, have voted to "explore" a possible common candidate for Mexico State governor. None, however, has been decided upon yet; indeed, the coalition itself has not been set in stone. 

2) AMLO, however, has already decided that no matter what, he will present his own candidate, which of course will split the left's vote and favor Peña Nieto, without even bother to wait for the official campaign period to start. Those pesky rules simply do not apply to him; he has already barnstormed every municipality in  Mexico State and will now do it again, to back his candidate - in the fullest possessive meaning of the word.

3) There was no internal primary or vote among AMLO's followers; Polevnsky was simply "decided upon" in what appears to have been a commissioned opinion poll among the general electorate, though I am not sure about this yet. In any regard, the fact that the candidate's program, the "10 Commitments," was already drawn up and decided by AMLO before the candidate was elected, speaks volumes: Polevnsky is a pure figurehead whose own, and minimal, qualifications do not matter at all: The candidate could have been Winnie the Pooh as long as he had pledged allegiance to AMLO's program and pulled ahead in the polls, and this process has only served to highlight and not obscure this. 

With these considerations in mind: I hope that Mexico State's voters see AMLO's conception of representative democracy for what it is:  Hollow, plebiscitarian, and top-down. 

Roberto Gil Zuarth free to be candidate for the PAN presidency, says TEPJF.

Mexico's highest electoral court TEPJF declared yesterday unanimously that PAN's party rules do not prohibit Roberto Gil for running for the party presidency, rejecting the complaint by Senator Blanca Judith Díaz that Gil's short tenure in the party - he's been a member for barely 2.5 years - made him ineligible.

The tribunal is quite right: Technically, there is no law or stipulation in the party regulations decreeing this explicilty.

However - and there is a big however - party rules explicitly state that anyone who wants to be a member of the PAN's national council must have been a member for at least five years. It would therefore appear to be obvious that the same would apply to the party's top position, its president. One may venture to suggest that this has been so obvious that it didn't occur for anyone to write it down. Until Gil came along, that is: His backers have arrogantly dismissed this rule as having nothing to do with the party presidency.

It should be obvious to any remotely objective observer what while the TEPJF ruling may be technically correct - it is not explicitly written - it is such a blatant violation of the spirit of the party laws, and to be sure, goes against PAN's entire transitory, which remained a party of legality and institutionality until Fox and particularly Calderón heavily battered the party's autonomy. Should Gil become the party president he will be the third president imposed by Calderón. For the PAN it will be a Pyrrhic victory.

Veracruz outgoing PRI Governor Fidel Herrera leaves massive debt

Just a few days after outgoing Governor Fidel Herrera of Veracruz claimed that he left the state's finances in perfect order and with a surplus of 6.5 billion pesos, his finance secretary Salvador Sánchez Estrada revealed the state's budget deficit is 9.3 billion pesos.

Opposition lawmakers, but also members of the ruling PRI, questioned even these figures and demanded in vain more details on the state of Veracruz' finances. Óscar Lara Hernández, a PAN local deputy, claimed the real debt may even be far higher: Close to 40 billion pesos, or more than 3.2 billion US dollars - a historic high. The line of creditors - from private corporations and banks to social security institutes such as IMSS and ISSTE - is long.

All this - and yet nothing stopped stop Herrera from declaring his interest in a 2012 presidential candidacy for the PRI. 

PRD: Ulises Ruiz Ortiz leaves 26 dead and a 10-fold rise in public debt

Oaxaca state legislator Carol Antonio Altamirano, coordinator of the PRD group in the Oaxaca legislature, said that Ulises Ruiz Ortiz will leave a debt of at least 26 murders, and a public debt that skyrocketed from half a million pesos to five billion pesos.

Ruiz, for his part, has warned against any "witch hunt" of his outgoing administration by the new one headed by Gabino Cué.

I say let the witch hunt begin.

According to Facebook, Peña Nieto is already a winner

I decided to get rid of my personal Facebook account for a variety of reasons, yet thought of checking the followers of a few likely candidates for 2012 before I bid farewell:

The figures, in terms of "Likes," were as follows:

Marcelo Ebrard: 1,377

Josefina Vázquez Mota: 2,106

AMLO: 14,106

Manlio Fabio Beltrones 20,490

Santiago Creel: No public profile

Juan Ramón de la Fuente: No public profile

And Enrique Peña Nieto......  276,760

(Calderón, by comparison: 104,817)

Wow. Even though internet is clearly not restricted to the middle and upper classes, it seems the Golden Boy has reached deeply into this segment already. An entire decade has passed since the PRI held power. Many may not have forgotten, but many new have come of Facebook-age since, and are more than ready to embrace the "new" PRI, which, judging by Peña Nieto's actual behavior in power, looks just like the old PRI.

A rare sight: AMLO and his youngest son, now a political debutante

A rare image indeed: AMLO and his youngest son. Jesús Ernesto is AMLO's three year and seven months-old son from his marriage with his second wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez, for his Toluca rally. Courtesy of Milenio

A candidate with no shame: Leonel Cota registers as PANAL candidate

The former president of PRD and before that governor of Baja California Sur, Leonel Cota, must surely be one of the most opportunistic and desperate political candidates in that state's history. After his candidacy for the sweet spot as municipal president of the tourism (and high income) paradise Los Cabos, Cota huffed and puffed and loudly abandoned the PRD. (Quick note: He was even before that, until 1998 a prominent PRI member, until he lost the election to be its gubernatorial candidate).

Then, Cota sought the nomination of the PRI-allied Green Party (PVEM) - an archenemy of the PRD, to be sure, and even AMLO found this postulation regrettable. Cota then moved on to seek the nomination of Convergencia, which in BCS rejected a common candidate with PRD and PT. Yet apparently these negotiations went awry. And what did Cota do?

He now just registered as a candidate of PANAL! That's right, the teacher union-based PANAL, another arch-enemy of the PRD and particularly Andrés Manuel López Obrador. PANAL, headed by the notorious "Jimmy Hoffa in a skirt" Elba Esther Gordillo, whose mobilization of teachers on behalf of Calderón in 2006 was a big contributing factor to PAN's victory.

So let's see: Leonel Cota, first of PRI, then PRD, then PVEM, then Convergencia, then PANAL.
His recent moves has cemented his legacy as one of the greatest sinvergüenzas to have ever passed by the PRD.

Ciro Gómez Leyva: "Will Moreno Valle throw Mario Marín in prison?"

Rafael Moreno Valle will finally assume as as governor of Puebla in a couple of week's time. In that regard, political commentator Ciro Gómez Leyva asks a very pertinent question: Will the new governor send Mario Marín in prison? Marín is probably one of the most reviled governors in recent Mexican history, and new information keep popping up: In Lydia Cacho's colum, this excellent journalist is revealing new information she has uncovered regarding the "Precious Governor": Marín apparently has set up his own aviation company through his son Mario Marín García, using public funds as well as those donated from other PRI bigshots like former governor of Quintana Roo, Joaquin Hendriks, crafts of which have been involved in, according to Cacho's sources in the DEA, at the very least transporting druglords and contraband, and possibly for smuggling young girls as part of pedophile and prostitution networks.
We only know fractions of the dirty dealings of this despicable governor: May more soon come to the light of day, and may Mario Marín end up rotting in prison.

AMLO's 10 Commitments. Mexico State tour completed; new one to start soon.

For all those who might have harbored a suspicion that AMLO might be bluffing  - he never does - with his earlier announcement that he would back a separate candidate in the upcoming Mexico State gubernatorial election, Sunday's rally in Toluca should lay these doubts to rest. Having completed yet another tour of Mexico State's 124 municipalities, the last one remaining was the state capital. Here, in front of a crowd of thousands of supporters, he announced his candidate will be chosen by a "poll." As it stands, the four choices appear to be Horacio Duarte (PRD), Alejandro Gertz Manero (Convergencia), Yeidckol Polenvsky (PRD), and Óscar González Yáñez (PT). The chosen one will need to literally sign on to AMLO's program - talk about candidate independence! - that he has deemed "10 Commitments." They are:

• Promote job creation
• Establish unemployment insurance
• Loans and grants for rural producers
• Meal centers/eateries
• Universal pension to elderly
• Medical care to people without social security
• Scholarships to students from poor education
• Construction and improvement of housing in deprived areas
• Programme of public services in poor neighborhoods
• Better roads and construction of three subway lines

As soon as the candidate is chosen - and this could be by opinion poll, a primary, or, in AMLO's conception of democracy, a public plebiscite of hand-raising - AMLO will hit the road again for another round of Mexico State's 125 municipalities. He is truly putting everything in this fight against his old party, and clearly believes that should a PAN-PRD candidacy, to which he is utterly opposed, come out winning, his chances at the 2012 presidency are shot.

Another 2012 candidacy declared: Fidel Herrera Beltrán

Not exactly a surprise, yet as far as I can see the first time outgoing Veracruz Governor Fidel Herrera Beltrán has said so himself: He wants to be a presidential candidate in 2012.

Herrera Beltrán dixit: "I am eligible; it remains to be known if I am the chosen one."

Indeed it does.

CNC split from PRI? Unlikely yet threats fly as Mexican budget is passed

The Mexican Chamber of Deputies finally approved next year's federal budget, which is its prerogative. An apparent last-minute cut of more than 4 billion pesos in transfers to the countryside caused quite a stir, with PRI deputy Cruz López Aguilar resigning from the chamber's agricultural commission. López Aguilar, notably, is the leader of the Confederacion Nacional Campesina, a long-time pillar of PRI support. According to the CNC,  four of out five campesinos still suffer from simply having enough access to food, as the price they can fetch for their products is significantly lower than agricultural imports.

Reportedly, the peasant sector had been promised 33.4 billion pesos, a sum that changed to 29 billion pesos, though some legislators such as PAN's Gabriela Cuevas denied that the first sum had ever been promised.

In any case, CNC still has a massive presence among PRI's deputies; some sources put the figure as high as 85 deputies being affiliated with this organization. Significantly, Cruz López Aguilar actually threatened to leave the PRI altogether. While I have a hard time seeing he will follow through on his threat, it is clear it would be of enormous political importance if he did. 

Echoes of 1997: New Oaxaca legislature first-ever without PRI majority

At last, half a year (!) after the July 5 state elections, the 61st Oaxaca state legislature was finally installed.
Just like what happened on the national level in 1997, for the first time in Oaxaca's history, PRI will not have a majority in the state congress: PRI will have 16, while the united opposition will total 26 seats. Of those, 11 will be from PAN, 9 from PRD, 3 from Convergencia, 2 from PT, and one for a local party.
The legislature already made history: With a 40-to-2 vote, the deputies made Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza head of the legislature. It was only in 2007 that Cruz Mendoza, an indigenous Zapotec just like the great Benito Juárez, was denied assuming as president of the Santa María Quielogani municipality for being a woman.

One can only hope the PRI deputies will act more responsibly than the outgoing deputies, many of whom were loudly denounced by protesters as they terminated their mandate. Just two weeks ago, the outgoing 25-strong PRI delegation sought to again pass modifications to the charter regulating the operation of congress that would in practice have allowed the incoming largest single - PRI - the control of the most important of the legislature's organ, even if it only had a plurality and not a majority. The Supreme Court struck down this blatant attempt at institutional engineering, but the PRI deputies held a session without the opposition present where they basically passed the same proposed "reform." It is truly in this party's DNA to seek to bend, twist, shape, or brake any law or rule in their favor: You can take the PRI out of power, but never the hunger for power at all cost out of the PRI.

It should therefore hardly come as a surprise that the Supreme Court's @lex, a judicial statistics portal, recently revealed that from 2004-2008, the Oaxaca government headed by outgoing priísta Governor Ulises Ruiz, was the Mexican state that was involved in the highest number of constitutional controversies with the Supreme Court: Ruiz himself was denounced 19 times by different municipalities in the state, as well as 20 times by the Federal government, accused of having violated the constitution.

Already legislators such as Flavio Sosa, former head of Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) and earlier imprisoned by Ruiz, has called for a truth commission,  a demand backed by at least PAN and PRD. Let's hope that incoming governor Gabino Cué will not renege on his promises to thoroughly investigate any and all aspect of the extremely controversial Ruiz years.

Sandoval Íñiguez: "Ebrard is hanging on to me to get to Los Pinos"

This weekend's price for excessively elevated self-importance goes to.... Guadalajara Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez.

According to the cardinal, who says he "doesn't want to get into a discussion with that man" - for sure, it's far too convenient to simply hurl accusations and then not have the spine to stand by them - the public spats between him and Marcelo Ebrard are simply products of this:  "What he wants to do is simply to hang on to be in order to be a public figure, and then run for the presidency - that is what he wants."

Never mind that Ebrard holds the second most important elective office in Mexico. Never mind that his public approval ratings are high and his vote intentions have been rising throughout the country. Never mind that Ebrard showed a remarkable lack of restraint toward Sandoval's provocations before responding to them: All he wanted the whole time was to ride on Sandoval's coattails. Now we know.

Pro-AMLO block formed in Mexico State congress, but draw little support

Though AMLO will likely construe it as just another sign that the PRD is "hijacked" by his enemies, it is noticable that the new legislative block formed in the Mexico State legislature to back AMLO from the PRD only drew in Ricardo Moreno Bastida, who was until recently coordinator of the group yet was deposed by his peers after opposing the PAN-PRD coalitions and then declared himself "independent" of any party affiliation, and Crisóforo Hernández Mena, in addition to three PT deputies - Carlos Sánchez, Francisco Barragán y Óscar Hernández - and, quite amusingly, the three Convergencia deputies as well as Horacio Jiménez, Miguel Ángel Xolalpa e Ignacio Samperio.

Why amusing? While Convergencia on the national level is a more or less loyal backer of AMLO, in Mexico State the party has often joined forces with Governor Enrique Peña Nieto. Most notoriously, and quite recently, the Convergencia deputies voted in favor of the now-infamous Ley Peña, a last-minute legislation steamrolled through congress to seek to prevent a common PAN-PRD candidate. One can only hope that someday it will be uncovered what they asked and got in return from the Mexico State governor.
In any case, that new lopezobradorista block did not attract more members seem to suggest that the PRD is, despite AMLO's incessant campaigning against the alliances, quite lined up behind its state council, which voted 2/3 in favor of entering in alliances with parties such as the PAN.

Mexican Senate demands explanation from Governor Peña Nieto on femicides.

The murders of women in Mexico State is drawing national attention.

All parties represented in the Mexican Senate voted unanimously to demand that Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto come up with a report on the high number of femicides, or targeted murders of women and young girls, in his state. As noted earlier, Mexico State is the worst entity in Mexico in sheer numbers: Out of 2015 murders of women and girls in 18 of Mexico's 32 entities between Jan. 2007-Dec. 2009, 556 took place in Mexico State.

Notably, even PRI's senators voted for the agreement, which also called for Peña Nieto to "redesign and implement public policies for the prevention, deterrence, punishment and eradication of circumstances that generate and foster the murders of women," and specifically for the state Attorney General's office, whose shocking incompetence was exposed in the infamous Paulette case, to punish those responsible.

Mexican military to grow by 10,000; WOLA: Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez

The Washington's Office of Latin America's September report Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez (direct download here), while not containing any new and groundbreaking information, is a highly recommended read for those new to the new dilemmas of the massive militarization of Mexico's "war" against the drug gangs, and the explosion of human rights abuses in its wake.

It is particularly timely given that national defense commission in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies just endorsed a budget jump for the armed forces of 13.3 billion pesos, or around 1.1 billion dollars, in order to cover the cost of recruiting, training, and arming 10,000 more personnel.

The total defense budget will be around 65 billion pesos, around 5.3 billion. To put this is perspective: This is more than double of what was authorized to be spent on the armed forces when Calderón first came to power.

One should not be surprised to down the road learn of massive jumps in human rights abuses from the military either, one major criticism of Calderón's war that the president more often than not has chosen to ignore than to address seriously. I understand fully well that some of these drug gangs are so vicious and well armed that only military-grade forces can possibly take them on. Yet the thought of simply throwing 10,000 more troops in there profoundly worries me, for reasons the WOLA report expounds upon quite well.

One step forward for gay rights: Congress approves same-sex benefits

One strike against discrimination and for humankind moving forward: The Chamber of Deputies yesterday voted overwhelmingly to approve changes to the laws governing the Mexican state institutes for social security institute (IMSS) and for social services and security for state workers (ISSTE) that guarantees rights and benefits to same-sex unions and marriages. Both institutions had previously discriminated against spouses of such unions, which were denied such services even though their partners had paid their dues. They will now have the same rights as spouses/partners of straight couples.

The law was a result of an initiative promoted by PRD national deputy Enoé Uranga, and was backed by
PRI's Rubén Moreira, president of the chamber's human rights commission. The chamber voted 232-58 in favor, with 17 abstentions, and notably quite a few key panistas voted in favor of the initatives, such as former borough chief Gabriela Cuevas. Even the socially conservative PAN is changing, and is increasingly torn between the hardcore  social conservative and ultra-catholic right, and more liberal-minded and younger cadres.

The initiative will now head to the Senate, where PAN has a much higher representation as the Senate was elected in 2006. If enough PAN Senators choose to look forward and vote with PRI and the PRD, the imitative will become law as a presidential veto is extremely unlikely.

Cecilia Romero: "I will eliminate the dangers to Mexico"

The failed former head of the national migrants institute (INM) and candidate for the national PAN presidency, the ultra-right Cecilia Romero, when asked about likely presidential contenders Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Enrique Peña Nieto, declared, " "I will eliminate the dangers to Mexico".

Spoken like a true yunquista.

Massive show of force in Guerrero: 40,000 show up for Ángel Aguirre's campaign launch

On Sunday, Acapulco was pretty much paralyzed as more than 40,000 sympathizers of Ángel Aguirre's campaign for governor swamped the city, from the three parties PRD, PT and Convergencia that make up the coalition Guerrero nos Une behind Aguirre. It was quite an impressive show of force, and demonstrates that Aguirre, despite having been a priísta until very recently, was a clever choice in order to try to maintain the state for the PRD.

Interesting as always who was there and who was not: Gabino Cué Monteagudo, governor-elect of Oaxaca, Alejandra Barrales, president of the Mexico City Legislative Assembly (ALDF), Luis Walton Aburto, national president of Convergencia, and of course Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, chief of government of Mexico City.

It is notable how Aguirre seeks to capitalize on the Ebrard connection and if not exactly ride on the coattails, definitely latch on to the extremely popular and highly successful programs initiated by Ebrard and his predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City, pledging to the crowd to copy Ebrard's programs such as school stipends, uniforms, and supplies; assistance to single mothers; medical assistance for the elderly, and so forth. Ebrard, of course, is equally using the occasion to promote his own candidacy, to seek to catch up on the 5-6 year head-start campaign advantage that AMLO has on him.
Ebrard dixit:

"Ángel Aguirre wants schools to have free uniforms and supplies for all the children of the state. We already did it in Mexico City; we handed over one million two hundred thousand uniforms per year, because all the children are equal. Because of this we are helping him, and we know he is going to honor his promises"

And who was not present? Andrés Manuel López Obrador. I cannot recall the last time AMLO and Ebrard shared a stage, and it will hardly happen in the near future as they are fighting out the battle for the presidential nomination of the left, through proxy wars in above all Mexico State, where AMLO virulently fights against any alliance with the PAN, while Ebrard is strongly backing it. In Guerrero, notably the left is united, and there is no alliance with PAN, which presents its own candidate, former mayo of Taxco Marcos Efrén Parra Gómez, PAN's only stronghold in the state. It would have been a powerful show of unity of the left had AMLO showed up to throw his considerable weight behind Aguirre, yet although he has let it be known that he backs Aguirre's candidacy, he will not campaign for any candidate that is not explicitly his own.

Ricardo Alemán quits El Universal - why?

It took me by surprise to read the title of Ricardo Alemán's colum in El Universal this morning: "Thanks to everyone - goodbye." After more than 3,500 columns and 14 years, Alemán suddenly declared he is out, and gives absolutely no reason why, though he emphasizes it has nothing to do with freedom of expression and is merely a personal decision. 


Alemán has been somewhat of a firebrand for the left. The scorn he has heaped over the PRD in general and AMLO in particular has made him quite a reviled figure for this segment of Mexicans, in particular as his columns has been regularly chock-full of innuendos, wild speculations and outright conspiracy theories. Yet like an old clock that has stopped, occasionally Alemán would hit the bullseye, and he at times wrote critically of the PAN and PRI as well. It certainly was never boring to read his stuff, so by this yardstick he certainly was a successful columnist. Among all the columns and editorials of El Universal, his would usually show up as "most read."


Yet why is he leaving now? Perhaps it is fitting that he leaves no particular reason, allowing for the conspiracy theorists to grab hold. Was it his accusation that PRD's candidate in Baja California Sur is a narco? Did El Universal finally tire of his one-sidedness? I really don't know, but would love any suggestions. 

With all of Mexico's woes, this is the Church's priority: Lock up women

As La Jornada reports, a mere three days after the opening of the new state legislature in Veracruz, the archdiocese of Jalapa, headed by monseñor Hipólito Reyes Larios, asks that the state deputies immediately change the state constitution to throw women who have abortions in jail. 


Despite the increasing violence, drug wars, abuse of immigrants, floods, you name it, in the state of Vera Cruz, the Mexican Catholic Church's main worry is for the state legislature to arrest and throw in jail women - almost invariably poor, indigenous, and illiterate, who can't even afford or don't know about contraceptions because the church has fought against their sales as well as banning sex education - in jail.


It is at this point I am tempted to in person exhort archbishop Hipólito to simply go to hell.

All in the family, part 2: jefe Diego's son

The kidnapping of Diego Fernández de Cevallos, "El Jefe," had one effect on his family: His son David appears a beast of a man, who terrorized and abused his ex wife, and when his father was kidnapped, things have appeared to have gotten even worse: From today's story in La Jornada on the Fernández de Cevallos family and the ex wife of Diego, Ximena Marín-Foucher"

"This woman, bright-eyed but with a sad face, draws a sketch of a violant man, who caused his oldest son to pee in his pants only imagining the cries:

'He is a man who feels nothing. He is very cruel. He will kill dogs just like that. He is always armed, even in the house. Many times, when travelling roads, he would just kill dogs. He is sick' " 

To recall, Diego's ex wife, despite having custody of her children, had them violently taken away by her now ex husband, when he intruded in her apartment with scores of unidentified police. Hers is a horror tale on how far too many women are treated in Mexico, even - or maybe better yet, especially - in the higher layers of Mexican society. Yet even more so, it  also shows how law and order is at times completely in the hands of, and at the disposition of, the politically powerful: David and his father Diego Fernández de Cevallos have a power base in the state of Queretaro, where David apparently was able to push a local judge to come up with a new court order to grant him custody of his children, despite clear evidence that this man is extremely violent and should not have the custody of as much as a hamster.

The dark sides of his father have been long known, such as how he well as his low morals when it comes to engaging in institutional transgressions and blatant conflicts of of interest and, perhaps most clearly when his powerful law firm on many occasions successfully sued the Mexican State and won big money, all  all the same time as Diego Fernández de Cevallos remained a federal senator. 

The story of David, a vicious, mean father who is the son of a prominent politician, abuses of his wife, yet with ease uses his connection to make a judge cough up a verdict favorable to him sounds like a really bad movie plot. I've said it before: In these kind of families, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Mexican church's "Narco donations" and ties to drug lords causes friction and calls for investigations

The issue of narcolimosnas or donations from the drug gangs to the church, as well as the church's ties to the narcos more generally, is causing increasing friction within the Mexican Catholic Church. It has long been an open secret - or no secret at all - that the church has happily accepted massive donations from organized crime to fund its programs, maintain its buildings, or, in the extreme case of Hidalgo, erecting temples in their honor: There, it was recently revealed that Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano, head of the vicious Los Zetas mafia, had practically financed the building of the chapel El Tezontle, in Pachuca.

Monseñor Diego Monroy Ponce, rector of the Basílica de Guadalupe, rejects that any donations to the basilica came from the narcos, but called upon Archbishop of Durango Héctor González to reveal whatever he might know regarding the whereabouts of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, Mexico's most famous drug lord.

Senator Carlos Navarrete of the PRD, recently called upon the Attorney General (PGR) to investigate the Mexican Catholic Church for its ties to the drug lords, as did PRI's Jesús Murillo Karam, who demanded the church reveal what it knows. From the ruling PAN? Not a peep.

As long as PAN remains in power, don't expect the PGR to lift a finger against the church no matter its offenses: illegal interference in politics, libel, protecting pederasts, promoting hate crimes, and now, colluding with the narco criminals.

Baja California Sur, continued: PAN's faustian bargain J

The state branch of Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) in Baja California Sur, backed by national PAN leader César Nava, likely thought it had made an absolute bargain when it took in and made Marcos Covarrubias its candidate for governor. Covarrubias was until recently with the PRD, yet dumped the party when he failed to become its nominee for the upcoming gubernatorial elections - an all-too-common story throughout Mexico. Covarrubias also brought scores of his supporters with him.


Yet the PAN loyalists are not amused. The party had already chosen the businessman José Germán Castro as its candidate, yet he was quickly set aside, with other PAN candidates, to make room for Covarrubias  and some other high-profile candidates. Now a PAN rebellion in the state seems likely, adding on to the massive infighting within the PRD in Baja California Sur, which has held the state since 1999.
The likelihood that PRI will retake Baja California Sur is increasing day by day.

A warning tale against an "AMLO candidate" in Mexico State: Juanito

El Universal has a story in today's print edition on Rafael Ponfilio Acosta Ángeles, far better known as Juanito, who now know wants to - drumroll - run for mayor of Mexico City. Given that AMLO has vowed to present his "own" candidate in the upcoming Mexico State elections, the  charade of Juanito, who was AMLO's candidate in Iztapalapa last year, is briefly worth considering. 


To recall, when AMLO's favored candidate Carla Brugada failed to win the PRD's nomination to be the party's candidate for borough chief in the Mexican delegation of Iztapalapa, AMLO engineered the candidacy of Juanito to run on as an AMLO-backed candidate against the official PRD candidate, and called upon the local PRD voters to cast their vote for Juanito, who ran on the label of the Partido del Trabajo (PT) against the PRD candidate. While splitting the vote of the left, the gamble paid off, as Juanito came in first, the PT winning its first-ever delegation in Mexico City, and costing the PRD local representation as well as federal party funding. If there ever was a case of betrayal and "treason," accusations that AMLO like to hurl at the current PRD leadership, it was AMLO's betrayal of the PRD Iztapalapa. In the process he also demonstrated his modus operandi when it comes to respecting outcomes unfavorable to him. 


While Juanito won, after heavy campaigning by AMLO, the case became a huge embarrassment to the left and to AMLO in particular, as Juanito didn't stick to his part of the bargain: He was to step down and allow for Brugada to assume as head of Iztapalapa. Months of wrangling, protests, and disturbances followed, until Juanito, who displayed clear signs of medical schizophrenia, eventually relented, then stood firm, then relented again, then refused to step down... etc etc. 


Juanito today walks the streets of Mexico City, accusing both AMLO and Marcelo Ebrard, and the PRD as well as the PT, of being "traitors." 


AMLO's choice of Juanito as a candidate to short-curcuit PRD's candidate selection in 2009 should stand as a warning, for several reasons. It again demonstrated that AMLO will respect other actors and parties as long as they bend to his will. But even more so, the Juanito debacle displayed a remarkable lack of judgment on part of AMLO and his willingness to engage in complete scorched-earth tactics even against the party that had backed him thick and thin after 2006, having incurred millions of dollars in fines for following his edicts to shut down Mexico City. While the gamble eventually did paid off - Brugada did assume as delegation chief in the end - who is to say that whomever AMLO convinces to run as "his" candidate, will not equally turn his back on AMLO? 


And Juanito? He now rents an apartment in the Roma district and has become a die hard... priísta!

The tale of Baja California Sur: All hell is loose as politics come full circle with governor candidates

Baja California Sur will elect its new governor on Feb. 6 next year, and the processes of choosing candidates for the various parties has been extremely tumultuous and provoked a range of schisms within PRD, which governs the state. The intense internal battle within the left on a national scale has contributed directly to the party's turmoil in this state election. which for the PRD has as much with 2012 as it has to do with Baja California Sur. 


The deadline to register electoral coalitions expired this weekend, and the final make-up of electoral coalitions and their candidates is notable: Sudcalifornia para Todos (PRD y PT), with Luis Armando Díaz as its candidate; Unidos por Baja California Sur (PRI-PVEM), with Ricardo Barroso Agramont, and Alianza es Contigo (PAN and Partido Renovación Sudcaliforniana [PRS, a local party), with Marcos Covarrubias Villaseñor. 


Notably, Convergencia in the end did not join the PRD and PT but will presnet its own candidate. The lack of a common candidate among the three parties on the surface appear to make no sense; in other places, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has much influence over PT and Convergencia, has forbidden the parties to join with PRD if the PRD also want to include PAN, yet this was not the case in Baja California Sur. Yet as both national PRD President Jésus Ortega and Secretary General Hortensia Aragón complained, the election is really about who will control the left ahead of 2012. Again, AMLO will rather see the PRD lose than have it elect a candidate identified with his opponents within the party, yet here he didn't even have the excuse of a PAN alliance to provoke the break-up of the left. 


Politics has really come full circle in Baja California Sur. A quick look at the PRD's internal turmoils is quite instructive here. The state went to the PRD after Leonel Cota Montaño, a prominent PRI politician, failed to clinch his party's nomination for governor and jumped on board with the PRD. After Cota stepped down to later become AMLO's hand-picked national head of the PRD, the PRD kept the state with the election of  Narciso Agúndez Montaño as governor in 2011. Make a note of his second last name. 


When it came to electing PRD's new candidate for governor as well as for key cities and municipal districts, all hell broke loose. Due to much infighting between the supporters of Agúndez Montaño's former interior secretary and favored successor, Armando Díaz, and Marcos Covarrubias, the PRD's National Political Commission, a sort of an overseeing council of elders that is of recent origin and includes representatives of all the major factions in PRD, decided to cancel plans to decide candidates by polls, and the PRD's state council was charged with designating candidates. When they not surprisingly failed to come to an agreement, the party branch leader
Adrián Chávez Ruiz asked the CPN to designate candidates, which drew loud protests from Covarrubias who threatened to leave the party. Notably, Leonel Cota Montaño, despite being governor 1999-2005, wanted to now become mayor of tourist paradise and money cow municipality of Los Cabos, yet when it became clear that he would not be designated candidate, the PRD's former national president loudly ditched the party 


The PRD's CPN finally designated Luis Armando Díaz as candidate, and in a move that admittedly smacks of nepotism further placed Narciso Agúndez Montaño, brother of the governor, as candidate for Los Cabos, and former senator Ricardo Gerardo Higuera for La Paz. 

Yet the story hardly ends there. Even though Ortega controls the party's national executive committee and not the CPN, Cota loudly accused Ortega of "treason" and criticized the state government for promoting Armando Díaz as its candidate, declaring the worst that could happen to the state would be a candidate of continuity with the style of Narciso Agúndez. Irony of ironies: It was exactly Cota Montaño, with AMLO's blessing,  who imposed Agúndez Montaño, his cousin, as the left's gubernatorial candidate in 2004. 


More: Cota Montaño left the PRD to join none other than the Green Party (PVEM), which is truly Mexico's most cynical and opportunistic party. As local PRD deputy Víctor Castro noted, the PVEM is not only rightwing, but also an ally of PRI, the supposed arch enemy. Even AMLO expressed his displeasure with Cota's choice of new partner. 
Then, Cota announced that he would be candidate for mayor of La Paz rather on the party label of Convergencia - a party with very little presence in the state, but which would now see an influx of the supporters of Cota. As Milenio observed, this PRD rupture was fully sanctioned and supported by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Cota's sister, to add, is currently mayor of La Paz.


And there is even more: Marcos Covarrubias, former mayor of Comondú. who had loudly attacked his own party for treason and inconsistency and what not when it cancelled the poll, resigned from the PRD to join... the PAN! The party announced last weekend that it had successfully recruited Covarrubias as its candidate. Many other key PRD members are reported to have left the party. PRI, for its part, with the PVEM declared its candidate to be Ricardo Barroso Agramont, the leader of the party's state branch


It is hard to decide who deserves the price for blatant opportunism in Baja California Sur, a place where politics appears to have come full circle. While the current governor may succeed in imposing his former interior secretary as the next governor, Armando Díaz has had to fend off accusations of ties to the narcos, propelled by hardcore anti-PRD commentators such as Ricardo Alemán, who openly accuses Díaz of being a narco. The PRD, in turn, responded that the party is convinced Díaz has no narco ties, and asked the federal attorney general, PGR, to make public whether he is under any kind of investigation. 


As for the race, due to PAN's and AMLO's maneuvers, my bets are on the PRI, though it remains wide open, and as recent events serve to demonstrate, in la política sudcaliforniana, nothing is remotely certain. 

War against women continues to the end of pedophile-protector Mario Marín's government

In the months following the infamous decision of Puebla's state congress in March 2009 to change the state constitution to in order to make abortion a stated criminal, the state attorney general/prosecutor's office in Puebla has so far launched investigations of at least 30 women. Local PRI deputy Rocío García Olmedo, who fought against the law, warned that the state could become "another Guanajuato."


The women range in age from 12 to 37, and one should also note that the Puebla government has fought against contraceptives in the name of family values, while openly persecuting women who have for different reasons carried out abortions. 

To recall, this "reform" was signed into law by outgoing Governor Mario Marín, who gained national and even international noteriority when journalist Lydia Cacho exposed him as a protector of pedophiles in the infamous "Gober precioso" scandal where Cacho had exposed networks of pedophiles that involved Puebla businessmen close to Marín.

As for Marín, the governor was most recently involved in yet another scandal when it was revealed in June this year that he as mayor of Puebla had abused his position to obtain sex from a minor  - who was no more than 17 when the relationship ended, and quite likely qualifies as statutory rape, in addition to the blatant abuse of his office for sexual favors. 

This protector of "family values" has so far avoided prison, though notably he failed to impose a designated successor as governor in the past July elections, where the PRD and PAN in a coalition managed to wrest Puebla from the PRI after 81 years of monopoly of power, undoubtedly much due to the behavior of its infamous governor.