In Baja California Sur, the final piece missing in a pathetic opportunistic game of musical chairs

It's very minor news, but quite telling nonetheless: Alonso Germán Castro backs the PRI.

I've written before of the period leading up to the designation of candidates for governor in the upcoming Baja California Sur gubernatorial elections, which will be held just a mere week after those of Guerrero. Now, the final piece of the puzzle, if one may call it such, is complete: The last to join the game of political juggling is Alonso Germán Castro.

Remember him? He was the PAN politician who won his party's gubernatorial nomination. Fast forward a bit: Marcos Covarrubias, until then of PRD and a national deputy, ditches the party to be recruited on the PAN ticket, together with a local party, the PRS. Since this is now a coalition candidate, PAN argues - keen on keeping the far more electable Covarrubias as candidate - the nomination of Germán Castro was thus tossed out.

Now, the once-gubernatorial candidate for PAN just announced he is backing.... the PRI!

I can really think of no other state in Mexico where politicians have so shamelessly jumped from one party to another, as in Baja California Sur. This includes, of course, PRD's former national president, Leonel Cota, who must have been through 5-6 parties by now). 

The utter opportunism in BCS is simply pathetic, where party labels appear to mean absolutely nothing at all. No wonder Mexicans are cynical about their parties.

(Here's a good run-down of the candidates from El Universal)

Mario Marín: Farewell to a criminal, backed to the last by the "new" PRI

It was am embarrassing charade. Although chairs had been set up for more than 10,000 spectators, less than half showed up, with the result that event organizers were scrambling to remove the empty white plastic chairs as outgoing Puebla Governor Mario Marín began his farewell speech. As more and more damning revelations has surfaced, Marín's supporters have steadily dissipated - though not all.

Mario Marín, to recall just a few fun facts, is a protector of pedophiles, someone who has abused his political position for sexual favors, and is a possible ring leader in a human trafficking/pedophile ring. Purely political reasons has prevented him from being thrown in jail; this man is a criminal of the worst kind. As Katia D' Artigues noted in her column today, only a massive spending of close to 200 million pesos on the local media has so far bought their silence and stopped them from pursuing these and many other scandals.

Yet guess who came to offer their respects? Well, not those of the PRI's old guard that one might expect - Raúl Salinas, Roberto Madrazo, even Elba Esther Gordillo, who had all been invited but chose not to attend - but national party leader Beatriz Paredes and Governor Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico State - the faces of the so-called "new" PRI, which ostensibly does not share the authoritarian and vertical features of the old PRI.

Politics is about swallowing camels, yes, and like the production of sausage, it is at times better not to see how it is being done, yet by showing up at an event to honor a criminal like Marin, Paredes and Peña Nieto just dragged themselves a bit closer to the sewer from which scum like Marín originated, taking the "new" PRI with them in the process.

Can INM Salvador Beltrán del Río be trusted to tell the truth?

After a Wikileaks cable informed that U.S. agents had been allowed to interview migrants on Mexican territory using the offices of the national migrants institute, Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), its current head, Salvador Beltrán del Río, immediately denied this.

Yet Beltrán del Río, who recently took over as head of INM after the hapless Cecilia Romero, found himself in trouble: Not only did Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora seem to acknowledge the veracity of the cable by responding that "cooperation" with the U.S. in matters of "insecurity" exists, and that this also may relate to migrants, but Romero herself confirmed outright shortly thereafter that yes, FBI agents had on a least "a dozen" of occasions interrogated migrants in INM offices.

It is hardly a scandal of enormous proportions, but it makes me wonder:
1) Was Beltrán del Río simply not informed yet of this?
2) Or, is Beltrán del Río simply lying through his teeth?

The replacement of Romero by Beltrán del Río sent hopes to many that the INM would finally have a capable head - he has, for one, a law degree from Harvard - yet this is the second time in a very short period his words are put into question: Just a couple of weeks back, he had a spat with the Mexican human rights commission over the actual numbers of migrants kidnapped in Mexico, where INM operates with a much lower figure than other organizations. Unfortunately, a Harvard degree does not exempt him from being asked the question: Can Beltrán del Río be trusted to tell the truth?

TEPJF orders Mexico State electoral institute to

Mexico's highest electoral court, TEPJF, unanimously ordered the Mexico State electoral institute (IEEM) to admit a complaint made by the PAN and PRD against various functionaries of the state, including Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, as well as local state legislators and mayors, for using state resources for personal political advertisements. The IEEM had earlier refused to accept the complaint, arguing it had no jurisdiction, a decision backed by the local electoral court, yet TEPJF clearly saw it otherwise. 

Yesterday, a day later, the head of the IEEM, Jesús Castillo Sandoval, declared that the electoral institute does not follow orders from Peña Nieto's PRI government. Let's hope so. 

Mere days before Guerrero election, AMLO cries "treason" - why?

The timing may certainly seem peculiar, even if it was in response to a current event: Mere days to go before the Guerrero election, after it was known that PAN candidate Marcos Efrén Parra would decline in favor of Ángel Aguirre Rivero, AMLO immediately pronounced that the hastily patched PAN-PRD agreement was "treason" - a term AMLO tends to hurl around at anything he is in discordance with.

Note that the PRD-PAN hardly even agreed to an "alliance" in Guerrero, these intra-party alliances forged elsewhere that AMLO so ardently opposes, yet rather that the PAN candidate would decline in favor of the PRD candidate, asking his voters to cross the ballot for PRD rather than PAN (it is too late to remove Parra from the ballot).

What good does this serve? While it is hardly possible to measure the impact, clearly AMLO's disqualifications do not benefit the Aguirre campaign, but harm it. AMLO, to recall, earlier even noted his support for Aguirre, and while he failed to campaign for him (Aguirre didn't want to sign the "10 commandments" AMLO has obligated candidates elsewhere to agree to, as he simply didn't agree with several of them, such as the cancellation of a major hydroelectric dam project).

Yet AMLO's decision, which can only hurt Aguirre's chances, do follow their own logic: He would rather see a PAN-PRD alliance fail than to be successful, as he has staked pretty much his entire political capital on opposing them.

In the process, he is, of course, running the PRI's errand. The El Universal headline that reported on AMLO's condemnation is very, very telling in this regard: "AMLO and Peña Nieto criticize the Guerrero alliances." Unlikely bedfellows, yet bedfellows all the same.