Manuel Bartlett, former Puebla governor, is in many ways the epitomy of the old-style prinosaurio or PRI dinosaur. Many know him from the infamous fraud in 1988, when he doubled as both head of the interior secretariat and head of the federal electoral commission arranging the elections and producing the results, which were most likely drastically altered to favor Carlos Salinas.
I am working on a book and have been re-reading up on much recent political history, and found it interesting how Bartlett, who became Puebla governor 1993-1999, nearly derailed the crucial 1996 electoral reform in Mexico. When PAN won the Huejotzingo municipality in a state election in 1995, the state electoral commission, pushed by Bartlett, annulled the PAN's victory and handed it back to PRI. Due to this outrage, PAN left national negotiations over electoral reform, with the result that President Ernesto Zedillo himself had to intervene to push Bartlett to acknowledge PAN's victory.
Fast forward to the present. We now learn that this old PRI hack is now in negotiations to become a candidate for the senate in 2012.
Yet as whose candidate?
None other than that of AMLO's Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena).
In terms of political conversions and opportunism, this one is hard to beat.
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