The Return of Carlos Salinas, continued...

While many a proverbial eyebrow was raised by the presence of el innombrable during the bicentennial festivities, Carlos Salinas' return to the public view was in a quite institutional role: Felipe Calderón invited all current presidents to attend. Similarly, at a forum yesterday celebrating the 20th anniversary of the IFE, the Federal Electoral Institute, the "unnameable" was invited and held a speech. Why? Well, AMLO, to be sure, announced that Salinas' public appearance was "only to show off, to give as a fact that he is the boss of the mafia that controls all the institutions of the country, including the institute and the electoral tribunals."


As has been repeatedly noted, here and elsewhere, AMLO's constant denunciations that Salinas is the éminence grise controlling the levers of... well, just about anything in Mexico, is getting more than tiresome, and begs the question why he bothers to participate then in the first place. More ominously, by disqualifying every and all of Mexico's institutions, AMLO certainly sets the stage for future fraude protests, whether in Mexico State 2011, electing PRD's new president, electing PRD's 2012 presidential candidate, and the next miss universe, for that matter. 


Regardless, the reason is more profane: Salinas was invited to the forum for the simple fact that the IFE, in its initial form, and despite all its deficiencies, was set up in 1990 under his watch. It was, however, the first time in quite a few years that the reviled ex-president made a public discourse. It is worth reading in its entirety, and can be accessed here. 

Of note I would point to one statement in particular  that demonstrates that Salinas has hardly gotten any less cynical by the years:

"in 1988 the institutional framework was not ready, the electoral organ  was then controlled by the government and its party, and because of this the election authority could not build consensus; there was no electoral tribunal; and one could not give the results the same day of the election."

Really? The 1988 debacle, with the resulting murders of hundreds of activists, most of them from the PRD, really only happened because the "institutional framework" was not ready? 1988 happened because PRI engaged in one of the most blatant acts of fraud in its fraud-ridden history! To try to wash his hands off of this fraud by blaming it on the lack of well-functioning institutions is akin to saying, "oh, it's so terrible that we raped and killed the girl, but if only there had been police present, it wouldn't have happened."


Salinas and the PRI has much blood on their hands, and no amount of self-justification is going to wash off their responsibility for the 1988 fraud and the murders of party activists that followed. 

AMLO still can't get himself expelled from the PRD: "they are the ones who will have to go"

Despite his much-publicized threats to "ask for a leave of absence" from the party, AMLO declared he will still remain within the PRD, despite the massive 2/3 vote in the Mexico State local branch in favor of opening up for an alliance with PAN: 


"We are not leaving the party; let it be clear that it is they who will have to leave, not us."


As noted before, AMLO knows well that an expulsion from the PRD would be far more advantageous to him simply leaving, so he is moving forward, announcing that he will still present his own candidate for the upcoming gubernatorial elections. The two most likely bets are Senator Yeidckol Polevnsky and PRD deputy Alejandro Encinas, though I strongly doubt that Encinas really want to take the drastic step of breaking so directly with the party he helped found. 


In any case, Marcelo Ebrard, AMLO's rival for the 2012 nomination, noted that the local PRD branch's decision was "logical," which indeed it was, if the main goal remains to defeat a PRI candidate in Mexico State and, by extension, Peña Nieto in 2012. One should also take note that Juan Ramón de la Fuente, who is muy presidenciable, also backed the alliances: So much for the hopes of PRI to make him their Mexico City mayor, as El Universal's paranoid-megalomaniac-in-chief Ricardo Alemán earlier claimed a likely scenario. 


The question is now how to get past those tricky residency requirements to make de la Fuente a candidate in Edomex...