Dirty dealings in Guanajuato: Blatant conflict of interest in government purchases

In an audit, the secretariat of public administration in Guajanato issued a damning critique of the state's DIF, or the state's agency for family development, a social assistance association of sorts usually run by the wife of a governor, who may or may not have any qualifications whatsover to handle this job,

Regardless, in Guanajuato the audit found a "lack of probity in the use of public resources," perhaps most notoriously the decision by state governor Juan Manuel Oliva to spend almost two million pesos of tax payer money buying honey, to be distributed by the DIF, from the mother of his son-in-law.
While apparently technically not illegal, to call it a "conflict of interest" would be putting it mildly.

The probe also criticized a range of other aspects of the government's (lack of) transparency and probity in its management of public resources.

Guanajuato is one of the most retrograde states in Mexico, run by a particularly reactionary wing of the PAN, many of whom are members of the ultra-right catholic El Yunque society.

PRD's founder open to alliances - if, and only if, PRD candidates only

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the PRD's founder and still with a significant presence within the party, said he was open to backing PRD alliances with PAN, though only if PRD candidates were postulated.

A very small opening, but an opening nonetheless, for a PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State.

Credit where it's due: Encinas will accept poll on alliance. Will AMLO?

Now it's on the record: In an interview with Joaquín López-Dóriga, Alejandro Encinas notably stated that he would respect the result of a party/alliance vote on whether to go in alliance with PAN or not in Mexico State.
This is quite notable, as it is the first time he has said so openly, but also as AMLO keep repeating at every time he can, acting as if he were the boss of the PRD and not someone who has betrayed the party on numerous occasions the past years, that absolutely no possibility exists of said alliance.

Encinas: "I believe in a democratic process we have to subject to the rules." Indeed.
Yet as events the past four years have demonstrated, this is a concept fully alien to Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO); his acceptance of vote processes, whether we are talking intra-party debates, decisions of PRD's legislative groups, or even general elections, are contingent upon one thing: Whether he won or not.  The possibility of a PRD-PAN alliance being accepted by AMLO, even if such an alliance would be backed in a vote by the party base, are therefore slim to zero.

Of note: Juan Ramón de la Fuente again calls for legalization debate

Juan Ramón de la Fuente, former head of UNAM and secretary of health in the Zedillo administration - and, mind you, a possible "citizen candidate" for president in 2012 - again called for debating legalization of drugs in Mexico.

Luis Felipe Bravo Mena wants to be PAN's gubernatorial candidate in Mexico State

It didn't take long before leaving his job as Calderón's personal secretary, to announcing his desire to be PAN's gubernatorial candidate in Mexico State: Luis Felipe Bravo Mena just made it official. 

I am not sure what to think here, and it's not just because I'm fighting off a rough winter cold that is keeping me down: Bravo Mena is considered far from "center-right," but rather of the hard right; he is moreover identified as a member of the secret conspiratorial ultra-right catholic extremist El Yunque. Does Calderón with this want to say an absolute "no" to an alliance with the PRD, or is it part of an even more sophisticated ploy? He claims that the president had nothing to do with his decision, which is hardly believable.

Note that Bravo Mena also ran in 1993, as did Alejandro Encinas.
Both lost to the PRI candidate.

And what exactly does SME achieve with this?

I just don't get it. Just a few weeks ago, Martín Esparza received the toma de nota from the federal government as secretary general of the SME, recovering its legal status as union. So why keep on vandalizing?

Yesterday, members of the union, which controlled the now-defunct Luz y Fuerza state company that held a near-monopoly on electricity services in Mexico City, attacked the offices of the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), which is, mind you, not a private but yet another state company that took over the Luz y Fuerza service in Mexico. The SME members threw around paint and sprayed slogan all over the building, and destroyed two automatic teller machines used by regular Mexico City residents to pay their electricity bills conveniently. Now, because of the idiots in the SME, not only will regular citizens be inconvenienced, but given that CFE is a state-owned company as well, their tax payer money will have to be used to replace the machines destroyed by the SME. What purpose does SME leader Esparza possibly think this serves?

This is worthy of the worst charrismo of the PRI unions, not of a union claiming non-PRI left affiliations. Thugs.