PRD state branch to decide on PAN-PRD elections: Does it really matter?

The PRD of Mexico State are meeting today to decide finally on the possibility of going in alliance with other parties, principally the Partido Acción Nacional, for the 2011 gubernatorial elections in the state. Ahead of the meeitng of the PRD state council, state party president Luis Sánchez Jiménez asked the party's Comisión de Garantías y Vigilancia, or internal watchdog on rules and procedure, to decide on whether the council requires a simple majority or 2/3 majority vote to approve the alliances.


Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, has already declared that regardless of the outcome of the vote, he will reject such an alliance, dismissing in the process the the right of the party branch to decide for itself whether to go in an alliance or not, and that he moreover will ask for a "leave of absence" from the PRD - a term that simply does not exist; one is either a member of the party or one is not. More of consequence, Alejandro Encinas, who had earlier denied that he was seeking the nomination for PRD governor, now says he will only run as head of a PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition. That is, should the PRD state council this weekend decide to launch a common candidate with PAN to seek to defeat PRI and its 81-year grip on power in Mexico State, AMLO will launch his own candidate and that will likely be Encinas. In the process, however, the left might well be destroyed in the the state of Mexico, allowing for a PRI successor to Enrique Peña Nieto, and for Peña Nieto to return PRI to the presidency in 2012. 


As I believe Winston Churchill once observed, there are wars, there are civil wars, and then there are... internal party wars - the latter being the most vicious of all. 

"The disastrous Juan": Salvador García Soto rips Juan Molinar Horcasitas apart

Juan Molinar Horcasitas is decidedly one of the most controversial members of Felipe Calderón's government; the current Secretary of Communications and Transportation has most recently been pummeled for his appointment of the seemingly utterly unqualfied Mony de Swaan as head of COFETEL, the Federal Commission of Telecommunications, and of the granting of media spectrum licenses far below market value to Televisa and Nextel. Yet as commentator Salvador García Soto in El Universal points out, there is much more:

"There are people who should never opt for public service. They neither have a vocation for service nor provide any benefit to society they should serve. One graphic case, judging by this results as a functionary and public servant, is Juan Molinar Horcasitas. His tenure in different public institutions over the past 10 years has left a trail of errors, problems, disasters and inefficiencies that have had high political, social and even economic costs."

Ouch. Yet he is absolutely right: Juan Molinar Horcasitas is a case of a man who was a great academic, yet who has left a trail of destruction in his wake wherever he has gone. The time for his retirement from government "service" is long overdue.

Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez disgusted by gays

Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez recently informed us that gay marriages "disgust" him. 
I am not really convinced that the moral credentials of a publicly elected governor who calls on his critics to "go fuck their mothers" warrant that Emilio González Márquez should opine on... well, anything. 

One question for AMLO: Why bother participating?

It's quite circular, actually: PT and AMLO have been promoting various spots or campaign ads recently, and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has ordered some of them to be removed for violating electoral law. Most recently, AMLO and the PT launched another spot with images of former presidents such as Carlos Salinas, current president Felipe Calderón, and others, with the label "mafia" attached to them. IFE ordered it withdrawn for denigrating the presidential office.  AMLO, in turn, argues that this is merely evidence that IFE is controlled by.... you got it, the mafia. In AMLO's words, 

"We all know that the institutions have been undermined, because the serve a mafia of power, not the people."

You might consider it a preemptive strike - label IFE, TEJPJ, the congress, the PRD, whatever, as "mafia" ahead of any adversarial decisions. But it also begs the question: If the dice are so truly loaded against him, if the PAN, PRI, the PRD under Ortega for sure, all the institutions, are either part of the "mafia," are "traitors," or both - why bother participating in the first place?

Sad day for IFE: Federal Electoral Institute disappoints greatly by refusing to deal with church

It's a disgrace: The Mexican Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) voted 7-1 to simply pass on the compliant it received from the PRD regarding the extreme interference by leading members of the Mexican catholic high cleargy, above all the Mexico City Archdiocese spokesman Hugo Valdemar, and Guadalajara cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, who on many occasions have called on voters not to vote for the PRD, a party they smeared as "fascist." Rather than giving an opinion on the matter, IFE voted to simply pass the case on to the Interior Ministry. Yet by doing so - by refusing to take responsibility on a matter that, given the church blatant violation of the constitution, may have a crucial impact on the 2012 elections - the case is effectively dead: Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora has the entire time been utterly passive and deferent to the church's extremist declarations, refusing to to his job of defending the Mexican Constitution and democracy. 


IFE Coincilor Alfredo Figueroa was a lone voice that spoke up for IFE's autonomy, arguing it shouldn't merely defer to SeGob, or the Interior Ministry

"We can call on the President of the Republic, but not on Sandoval; we can call on different actors, but not on the church....why did we create an autonomous organ for later to abdicate [responsibility]?"

Others like Marco Antonio Baños, who in the end voted for passing on the case to SeGob, nonetheless argued IFE should still take a stance again Sandoval Iñiguez and Hugo Valdemar. Yet the IFE refused to to so. One may consequently expect the most extremist and falangist elements of the Mexican Church to feel emboldened and merely step up their attacks. 
Qué vergüenza.