Organización Política Nacional de los Trabajadores: New umbrella labor federation

The Organización Política Nacional de los Trabajadores (OPNT) is a new loosely-knit labor federation, of sorts, headed by the Mexican electricians union SME. It will hold its constitutive assembly Aug. 27-28, and will seemingly incorporate 40 different organizations, though it appears it will be built around the SME.

The new organization does not have yet a head, and it is not clear whom it will support electorally in 2012, though PAN is already excluded. Should Martin Esparza of SME become its leader, on can expect much horsetrading with the PRI and PRD.

AMLO demands from PRD candidacies and 1/3 of Mexico's electoral districts

Recently, the PRD asked its former presidential candidateAndrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to appear in a few "spots" or campaign ads for the party, together with party founder Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, in a display of "unity." AMLO then responded that he would do so only if the PRD would give him a big chunk of its government-allotted airtime (radio and TV) for him to use for his own electoral movement, Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (MORENA).

Then, just days after appearing in a front-page interview in La Jornada again hurling accusations of treason against the PRD, AMLO dropped another bomb: In order for MORENA to join the PRD in a coalition in 2012, he demands that the party give his movement complete control of the electoral organization in 100 out of Mexico's 300 districts, the control of 11 state party branches, as well as an unknown number of candidacies.

As might be expected, given that AMLO in practice is asking the PRD, a 22-year old party, to simply hand over the control to a recently created and unknown entity, the party isn't exactly running to accept the proposal. Party president Jesús Zambrano was quite diplomatic:

it is very difficult that one just hand over complete districts with complete structures. The PRD exists in the 300 constituencies. It is the biggest party of the Mexican left. A party is not built overnight and it is hard to think that the PRD will give MORENA a district and that its complete district representation just disappear. 

This is really like watching a slow-motion car crash, repeated as farce: It is exactly what happened in 2006, when AMLO's wholly unreliable Redes Ciudadanas took over control of voting station representation from the PRD in many districts, and did an extremely poor job at it.