Lest there should there be any doubt, any doubt at all, that Roberto Gil Zuarth is a calderonista, or Felipe Calderón's candidate to be president of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), here's Gil proclaiming to the world that he is... well, a calderonista:
"I am a calderonista, I have affinities for the President, I know him, I hold him in esteem, I have affection for him, he is part of my personal loyalties... I do not renounce nor deny my admiration for Felipe Calderón."
Even though some of the words used here in my poor translation sound perhaps less homoerotic in the original Spanish, this is just over the top, particularly as a main criticism of current PAN president César Nava, as well as his predecessor German Martínez, was exactly that they were mere impositions by Caldéron - and that in a party that always proudly proclaimed its independence and refusal to succumb to the powers-that-be, even if they were from the PAN.
Should there be any more doubts that Gil is the anointed candidate of Mexico's president, Gil added for good measure that he would "preserve the legacy of Calderón." I find that disturbing on so many levels.
But there is also something here that doesn't quite add up. Why go to so extreme lengths to identify with Calderón? One possibility is that while Gil's afinidades for Calderón are probably real, he knows that his candidacy might be formally rejected as he only has 2 years and 4 months in the party, and in may step a Gustavo Madero, a man who is also a calderonista but who is not shouting it out like Gil, which may make him more palatable to more PAN councilors whose, well, affinity for Calderón is waning. This includes the 85-100 members of PAN's national council who those in the know reckon to be members of El Yunque.
(Yet I admit this is starting to sound a bit like El Universal's house conspiracy theorist Ricardo Alemám, who like an old clock who has stopped at least twice a day will eventually be correct)
The impeachment papers filed with Chamber of Deputies by PRI federal deputies from Jalisco, can be accessed here. Thanks to cyberpueblo.com, a social-political networking site that contains a wealth of information and prime material, including eye witness reports and videos, regarding the now-infamous case of Tenacatita beach, which lead to the impeachment petition being launched against Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez days ago.
As the government of Zeferino Torreblanca nears its end in Acapulco, La Jornada's correspondent in Guerrero state sums up the total death toll of perredistas, or members of the leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), murdered during his government: 46. The most prominent fatality is clearly Armando Chavarría Barrera, assassinated in August 2009, who was a very likely gubernatorial candidate to succeed Zeferino (For more on Chavarría's murder, see this post). Yet the range of murdered activists include everything from former mayors to prominent peasant and social leaders, to groups of voters - for the 2009 federal elections, in the municipality of Coahuayutla, close to Michoacán and in the Costa Grande, 12 indigenous purépecha identified with the PRD were gunned down on their way to vote.
The tragic irony is of course that Guerrero's governor Torreblanca was until recently identified as a PRD governor. While he recently loudly denounced the party for the simple reason that the PRD, moreover well aware of Torreblanca's unpopularity within the party and with voters as a whole, refused to allow him to impose his own candidate to succeed him.
It would not be prudent to signal Torreblanca as the architect behind the PRD murders - I personally do not believe he had anything to do with any of them, and for sure no evidence has surfaced to indicate this. Yet the ineptitude of Torreblanca's police and prosecutorial appointments have been appalling, as the murders continued unabated and unresolved (including Chavarría's), while the governor seemed more busy with sending police forces to repress street demonstrations by social forces protesting his government's ineptitude and general indifference to the plight of social activists, constantly harassed and frequently murdered, in the state of Guerrero.
