Jesús Ortega: PRD and the "two poles"

PRD national president Jésus Ortega, while denying not-too-convincingly that the PRD remains a divided party, recently outlined what he regard to be the key internal fault line of the party. According to El Universal,

"The PRD leader said that almost from its inception there have been two poles within its ranks: one that seeks to be of the center-left and brings together different sectors, including business sectors, to build something similar to that achieved by Brazil's President Lula da Silva and the Broad Front in Uruguay.  There is another, he emphasized, which is polarizing, extremist, and with anarchist traits. He described as absurd the statements from PRD members that accusing of being a servant of the PAN and the President."

The argument that the division within the PRD is chiefly between its movement and party advocates, and that the division between these two poles runs to the chore of PRD's history,  current identity and, crucially, its most brutal internal  battles, is the topic of a recent political science dissertation. 

PAN going it alone in Guerrero: Marcos Efrén Parra candidate for governor

The PAN's National Executive Committee announced that PAN will not joint PRI in an electoral alliance for the gubernatorial elections in Guerrero in 2011. CEN president César Nava argued that the case of Guerrero was different from other states: In Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa, the PAN-PRD alliances were successful in kicking out the PRI for the first time in history. Guerrero, however, is today nominally run by the PRD, having won with Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo in 2005. The argument is a valid one, if the main purpose of the alliances were merely to achieve alternation, and as such the CEN is likely to continue pushing for a PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State, which has always been governed by the PRI. Yet it is no secret that the PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition behind Ángel Aguirre Rivero had also hoped to enlist PAN, a party that in any case has little presence in Guerrero. It's local party branch, for instance, argued in favor of joining the PRD-led coalition behind Aguirre rather than to put forth a testimonial candidate with minuscule chances of winning

Marcos Efrén Parra Gómez is a former PAN mayor of silver town Taxco.

Peña Nieto's frontal assault on democracy: Legislation fast-tracks through Mexico State Congress

The initiative by the Green Party (PVEM) to impede the formation of electoral alliances in the upcoming gubernatorial elections in Mexico State, breezed through the local legislature in Mexico State after a cursory hearing with such a speed that designating it a "fast-track" hardly does it justice.  


What it does:
* While the legislation does pretend to block alliances, it will still allow common candidates, in the sense that PAN and PRD can still present a common one for 2011. However, should this legislation pass the full floor vote, they now basically have to register as one electoral party-coalition, rather than four separate parties  (PAN, PRD-PT-Convergencia) with separate lists for deputies and municipal presidents, as well as, crucially, separate funding. They will only have one common representative at the state electoral institute, which arranges the election and addresses irregularities, as well as only one representative at the ballot box. They will, in essence, operate in a "reverse gestalt," for lack of better word, where the total sum of the four parties will be considerably less than their component four parts. 


--> Note here that on the national level, the 2007 Electoral Reform went the opposite direction: While e.g. PT and Convergencia extracted a huge number of "safe seats" from the PRD as a price for going into a full coalition (all votes went to the coalition, not the individual parties) in 2006, this was changed at the federal level as the smaller parties now will have to carry their own weight - they have to present their own legislative/municipal lists rather than negotiating safe seats and "vote transfers" in advance. 


* In addition, however, the legislation also aims at greatly reducing the campaign time from 72 and 60 days for governor and deputies/municipal presidents, respectively, to 45 and 30. Clearly this is directly going to favor the party that already is receiving near total permanent coverage in the media, PRI and its candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. 


* Other measures to reduce party spending as well as methods to designate party representatives at the ballot stations, both intended to favor the sitting PRI. More here later. 


PRI and PVEM voted in commitee to bring the proposed legislation up to a floor vote, and was backed in this by none other than Convergencia, a quintessentially opportunist party that rivals the PVEM in frequency of turnings its cape to the wind (the same party is, to recall, on the national level an ardent backer of Andrés Manuel López Obrador), as well as PANAL and the Partido Social Demócrata (PSD) (the latter is now-defunct on the national level, and its representative in Mexico State is a PRI member in all but name). 


Peña Nieto, in his usual slick doublespeak, claimed he and the PRI were not against alliances at all:

 "What the PRI want is rather to promote a legal framework that permits transparent political competition, and that doesn't create confusion."

Beyond such niceties, this initative is far from aimed at ending confusion, but directly to seek to block a common PRD-PAN candidate in 2011, as well as other measures intended to directly favor the PRI candidate.

Now PRI/PVEM and its backers claims that such amalgams represent a more clear option than common candidacies, where parties run on their own separate labels and lists yet combine to put forth e.g. a common gubernatorial candidate.  The argument does not hold water even in a cursory reading.

PRI/PVEM are using the case of Guanajuato as a precedent; there, the local congress voted to ban common candidacies, which was appealed unsuccesfully to the Supreme Court. Yet the comparison is a spurious one, for a range of reasons, most importantly as it didn't apply to gubernatorial candidates, but municipal-level offices.

Luis Sánchez Jiménez, leader of the Mexico State branch of PRD and one of the most capable of PRD's cadres, deemed Peña Nieto "a danger to democracy and to the country." It is certainly a clear demonstration of the lengths of institutional engineering to which Peña Nieta is willing to go to reach the Mexican presidency.  PRD president Jesús Ortega gets the final word:

"Peña Nieto is on several fronts doing everything possible to prevent the alliance. He knows the risk of a democratic union that can beat him and the PRI in elections in the State of Mexico, and this will be a mortal blow, not only toward his pretensions to be President of the Republic, but a mortal blow to the person who appears today as the candidate of the oligarchy."

Manuel Añorve Baños offical PRI candidate, with Rubén Figueroa Alcocer in the audience

Manuel Añorve Baños, mayor of Acapulco, was designated a "unity candidate" by the PRI's Political Council in Guerrero State for next year's gubernatorial elections.

With no apparent sense of irony, Añorve claimed "I represent the future," with former Rubén Figueroa Alcocer present in the audience. Figueroa, to recall, was kicked out by the state legislature following the infamous Aguas Blancas massacre on June 28, 1995, where 17 campesions were executed in cold blood by police agents, and which Figueroa for the longest denied had ever occurred, until video images of the murders surfaced.

To his credit, Añorve did call for dialogue with the many armed guerrilla-like groups that still exist in Guerrero.  He will now face off against his cousin Ángel Aguirre Rivero as his main opponent. 

Miguel Alonso Reyes assumes as Zacatecas governor, will investigate Amalia García's government

Miguel Alonso Reyes, the first of the governors elected the past July 4th to assume power, had very harsh words for the outgoing state administration of Amalia García Medina. Alonso declared in his inauguration ceremony,

"Our people people reprove of the profit making for the personal and family gain of our rulers. We reject the irresponsible practice of those tho feel that public goods and the government are their property. The exercise of public service is always to serve."

Very strong words, especially with Amalia García just meters away from the podium. The new governor declared he would revise the public accounts and budget spending for any irregularities. Denunciations of nepotism involving García and her daughter Claudia Sofía Corichi García have certainly been flying around for quite some time, and one might find out whether these had any substance. 

Miguel Alonso, notably, is  former PRD member who held positions in both García's and her predecessor Ricardo Monreal's government, but ditched the PRD to run on a PRI-PVEM-PANAL coalition. His victory, which meant the PRD's loss of Zacatecas after 12 years of governing, has primarily been attributed to a mediocre performance by Amalia García, who was strongly criticized by Alonso for leaving Zacatecas with declining social indicators and economic performance standards.

García saw her presidential ambitions pretty much squashed after failing to impose Antonio Mejía Haro as her successor, but the failure of PRD-PT-Convergencia to present a common candidate - Monreal has since ditched the PRD and worked for a separate PT candidate - was clearly of huge importance as well.