In a great - and rare these days - display of bipartisanship, key PAN and PRI legislators such as Norma Leticia Salazar (PAN) and Miguel Ernesto Pompa Corella (PRI) called for a thorough cleanup and restructuring of the Instituto Nacional de Migración, the National Institute of Migration (INM), following the firing of its leader, widely regarded as inept, Cecilia Romero. This is important.
Pompa:
"We must ensure that those who come to the institute not only knows the subject, but have they have the will to apply the relevant law, are disposed to be held accountable, end the opaqueness, and rein in those who work in migration. I am from the border, and we see how they provide no protection to our countrymen and far from protecting them, they themselves extort them, so for this we will be keenly watching"
PRI Senator Carlos Jiménez Macía declared that Romero's leadership the past four years
was "the darkest era in the migratory history of the country," given the increase in harassment, abductions, and outright murder of immigrants, above all central Americans since Romero took power in December 2006.
PAN deputy Salazar Vázquez also emphasized a need to amend the penal code to ensure that those collaborating in the trafficking of migrants - Mexican, Central Americans, or otherwise - will be duly punished. Let's hope so. Clearly, however, the crimes of the INM go beyond a single leader, or even a handful of bad apples: Serious institutional restructuring is in order for trust to ever be gained in the INM.
While hurricane Karl might affect attendance, PRI is holding its its Political Council this weekend. The entire top PRI leadership, with the notable exception of Enrique Peña Nieto and Manlio Fabio Beltrones, its two top candidates for PRI 2012, have reported they will attend the Council deliberations, which will swear in a few new council members, debate the party's strategy toward 2012, as well as notably try to decide how to elect its new party leader after Beatriz Paredes Rangel. Quite unusually, Humberto Moreira, PRI governor of Coahuila, has already and most publicly stated his desire to be PRI's next president, warning that the next party leader should not be anyone who merely wants to use the office it as a trampoline to become the PRI's presidential candidate in 2012. This is a thinly veiled reference to Roberto Madrazo, the infamous Tabascan who did exactly that in 2005-6, but also a possible warning to Beatriz Paredes as well, who has not ruled out a presidential bid, as well as possibly extending her mandate as PRI president. Notably, Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, who will preside the Chamber of Deputies the next period, is considered to be her man, in the figurative sense.
Humberto Moreira Valdés is scheduled to end his sexenio as governor of Coahila in Dec. 2011, and he would thus cut short his term by a year should be be the new PRI leader. Moreira might also be referring to his possible opponent Ismael Hernández Deras, who will shortly step down as governor of Durango, but as many PRI watchers have not ruled out as a possible contender for 2012, given his seeming popularity within and outside of Durango.
Other possible PRI presidency candidates are Francisco Rojas Gutiérrez, leader of PRI's parliamentary group, and Emilio Gamboa, newly elected leader of PRI's CNOP (Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares), traditionally its "popular" or middle-class organization. Gamboa though is on bad terms with Paredes.
Humberto Moreira is on notably good terms with "the unnamable" (to borrow from AMLO's vocabulary) Carlos Salinas, and should Humberto Moreira manage to position himself well as PRI leader, he will likely work for the candidacy of Enrique Peña Nieto. Look for any hints of papal white smoke this weekend.
