Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Leonel Cota comes full circle: The die-hard AMLO loyalist goes back to PRI

Leonel Cota, the former priísta who became PRD governor of Baja California, then was handpicked by AMLO to be a pliant national PRD president, has now come full circle to back the PRI candidate for governor, if PRI, the Green Party, and PANAL back his bid for the sweet spot as mayor of Los Cabos.

(He'll need quite a push - current opinion polls have him down on 13 percent or so - the sudcalifornianos are not too excited about their former governor, it seems)

I wonder what AMLO's reaction to this will be.

Rafael Moreno Valle assumes as Puebla governor; "no one will be above the law":

Rafael Moreno Valle assumed as the new governor of Puebla yesterday. He sure will have his work cut out for him: The disgraced protector of pedophiles, Mario Marín, left the state in a terrible state, far worse than when he took office in 2005: Massive crime increase, among the worst (29th place) states in terms of corruption; a bankrupt pension system; a  jump in the state's financial obligations from three to nine million pesos; and so forth.

No wonder Marin was booed upon the mere mention of his name; he left hurriedly from the inauguration ceremony.

Governor Moreno Valle in his speech said that "no one will be above the law," and that an audit will be made:
"We will make a timely review of the resource management of the of the past administration; there will be no persecution, but neither cover-ups."
If Moreno Valle is serious, he should start by throwing Mario Marín in jail.

Alonso Lujambio: A great academic, yet a pathetically timid secretary of education

It seems by now clear that Alonso Lujambio, secretary of education, will do absolutely nothing to stop the SNTE teacher union from, in Baja California Sur, handing out propaganda material for its PANAL party to children, soliciting sensitive information from them and their parents, and using schools for open political activities in favor of PANAL, such as forcing children to stuff envelopes in Mexico State.

Lujambio first said schools "under no circumstances should be places for political proselytizing," yet then quickly dismissed the occurrences as "an isolated event" - which it is not - and in a sorry display of Pontius Pilate-like hand washing, said the matter belonged with electoral and legal authorities, not with the secretary of education. It was a remarkably open admittance that Lujambio will do absolutely nothing to stand up to the all-to-powerful Elba Esther Gordillo. How on earth is it possible to simply dismiss this as "it is not my responsibility"? You are the secretary of education!

At least in Baja California Sur, SNTE dissidents opposed to Gordillo has denounced  the matter to the attorney general. Several deputies in Congress have demanded that the federal government cut SNTE's funding and privileges. Wherever any action may come from as a result of SNTE/PANAL's outrageous actions, one is hard pressed to expect anything at all from Alonso Lujambio Irazábal -  a great academic (and a PhD from Yale) yet a man, we now know, with unfortunately very little political backbone.

Coahuila: PRD agrees to allliance, yet AMLO already presented his own candidate

The Coahuila branch of the PRD just voted in favor of going in an alliance with the PAN for the upcoming gubernatorial election in the state. Likely candidate: Guillermo Anaya Llamas of the PAN.

The battle to beat the incumbent PRI - the current governor, on "leave of absence" as PRI president, wants to make his brother the next governor - is in any case an uphill one, yet it certainly makes more sense for the PRD to rally behind a PAN candidate than the other way around: In 2009, the PRD barely pulled 3 percent of the vote in the state, against around 21 for the PAN and 60 percent for the PRD.

Yet if even an alliance candidate is a long shot - though a shot - going with a separate candidate is purely testimonial. That doesn't stop AMLO, who recently declared that regardless of what the PRD decides, his candidate will be Jesús González Schmal, presumably on a PT and Convergencia label.

Legionarios de Cristo, now accepting complaints

It's about sixty years to late, but nonetheless a step forward: Legionarios de Cristo, or the Legionaries of Christ, announced they will create an  "outreach committee" whose only task will be to receive complaints of victims of pederasty by its now-deceased founder Marcial Maciel.

I just finished the excellent "Marcial Maciel, historia de un criminal," by journalist Carmen Aristegui.
It is essentially a series of interviews with everyone from victims to defenders of the criminal founder of the Legionaries of Christ. What is shocking is that already in the 1940s(!), the Vatican was warned of this pederast and pedophile son of a bitch, yet continued up until the 2000 to ignore his many, many victims. Letters were sent directly to the pope, including John Paul II, even in his native Polish, which were read, yet fully ignored. Ratzinger brought it directly before John Paul II, but was told to leave it be, which he did until, to his credit, he did as pope finally denounced Marcial Maciel as a criminal, or a man "devoid of scruples and authentic religious sentiment."

As Burro Hall perceptively noted a while back, this is indeed the second "miracle" one is looking for in order to make John Paul II a saint: Preventing, despite the mountains of evidence, that Maciel avoided the docks. As the book by Aristegui details, the Vatican knew, and it knew a very long time ago.

Añorve does not accept defeat in Guerrero, but Peña Nieto is gracious in defeat

Manuel Añorve Baños lost with more than 13 points in Guerrero this Sunday, but has announced he does not accept the defeat, and say he will put any legal impugning of the election in the hands of PRI.

Far more statesmanlike is Enrique Peña Nieto, who does accept the defeat and goes as far as to congratulate winning candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero:_
What Guerrero experienced on Sunday was a celebration of democracy and that is the most important because one banished the idea that there would be a scene of violence, and fortunately there was not. It was an exercise in democracy and citizen participation in abundant display." 
Credit where credit's due.