It had to come: PRD leaders in cahoots with.... Salinas!

Sure enough: After having accused the current PRD leadership of every sin under the sun, AMLO managed to come up with the following invention, ahead the next reunion of PRD's national council:

"one should be afraid, because  as the leaders of the PRD have made alliances with Salinas, and Calderón, who knows what they will  decide [at the national council].


So the PRD leadership is now in cahoots with Carlos Salinas. Now we know. 

Samuel Ruiz

Courtesy of Upsidedownworld.org, here's a marvelous commentary by Emma Volonté on the great Samuel Ruiz. To paraphrase an old quip by Trotsky: If there were more men like Ruiz in the catholic church, I'd be a catholic too:

In January 2004, Samuel Ruiz wrote a pastoral letter in which he said: “The question that God puts to us at the end of our existence will be: What side were we on? Whom did we defend? Who did we choose? Questions that nobody, not even the powerful, can escape at the end of their life”.

Amen.

Lázaro Cardenás Batel declines becoming PRD's new leader -why?

Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, son of Cuauhtémoc, grandson of El Tata, finally declared he will not be a candidate for the PRD presidency. In the cardenasspeak typical of his father, it is far from clear exactly why he will not do so. He mentioned his commitment to his current visiting position in the U.S., though that is hardly a new factor that came up. Moreover, he does, in an interview with El Universal, state that he will back Encinas in Mexico State, so presumably he will return well in time for the July 4 election there.

Two theses that have been put forth:
1) Batel had demanded at least a majority of positions on the PRD executive committee, and didn't get it (can't find the link right now for this one)
2)  According to the Transcendió off-the-record column in Milenio, he did not get a clear commitment from the supporters of  Andrés Manuel López Obrador that they would respect the institutional rules of the game in the party - above all, of course, with regards to the future presidential candidacy.

Note that these two unofficial reasons are, to be sure, not mutually exclusive.