* Luisa María Calderón Hinojosa, the president's sister who despite her promise to never run for office while her brother was president, is running to be governor of her home state Michoacán, attacked Governor Leonel Godoy of the PRD, essentially blaming him for the murder of PAN mayor Ricardo Guzmán Romero.
* The PRD, in turn, is accusing PAN of taking advantage of Guzmán's murder for political gain.
Note that 28 mayors have been killed in Calderón's sexenio - and 20 since 2010 alone.
* PAN is accused of naked clientelism - by the federal FEPADE. The La Fiscalía Especializada en Delitos Electorales (Fepade), or the organ under the attorney general dedicated to investigating electoral abuses, to its credit moved against employees from SEDESOL or the federal social development secretariat, is it apparently was trying to hand out sacks of cement - 27 tons! - in return for voters giving them their voter ID number as well as a promise to vote for PAN.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The coming PRD split, 2: GAP leaves the PRD in Mexico State
In Mexico State, Higinio Martínez Miranda has led the faction Grupo de Acción Política since the PRD's founding. While it has much weakened in recent years, due to the rise of the ADN and Nueva Izquierda democratic socialist and social-democratic factions, it remained an important part of the PRD.
Yet now GAP has also declared it is leaving the party. And it does so in what is unfortunately a classic manner: It lost the party's internal elections, and rather than to accept its minority status - and the outcome of the election, of course - it is leaving the party, likely for the PT or Movimiento Ciudadano or, once it becomes an official party, AMLO's MORENA.
At this point in Mexico's political development, a split in the left is very damaging in the short run, but perhaps not so in the long run. Let's recall that the other "left" - and the quotation marks are warranted - parties PT and Movimiento Ciudadano, while bleeding support from the PRD, would likely both have disappeared from the landscape had it not been for AMLO allowing them to use him for electoral benefit.
Yet now GAP has also declared it is leaving the party. And it does so in what is unfortunately a classic manner: It lost the party's internal elections, and rather than to accept its minority status - and the outcome of the election, of course - it is leaving the party, likely for the PT or Movimiento Ciudadano or, once it becomes an official party, AMLO's MORENA.
At this point in Mexico's political development, a split in the left is very damaging in the short run, but perhaps not so in the long run. Let's recall that the other "left" - and the quotation marks are warranted - parties PT and Movimiento Ciudadano, while bleeding support from the PRD, would likely both have disappeared from the landscape had it not been for AMLO allowing them to use him for electoral benefit.
The coming PRD split: Now IDN threatens to leave the party
IDN, the most discredited and corrupt of PRD's internal factions, is threatening to leave the party unless the party's internal state elections in Mexico State are annulled.
While obviously very damaging to the party in the short run - the IDN is among the largest of PRD's myriad of internal factions - I am increasingly moving to the conviction that given the discredit IDN has brought over the PRD (it is led by "Rubber band man" René Bejarano and his wife Dolores Padierna), it may be a price worth paying for the PRD if it wants to establish itself as a modern, socially liberal, left-wing party.
While obviously very damaging to the party in the short run - the IDN is among the largest of PRD's myriad of internal factions - I am increasingly moving to the conviction that given the discredit IDN has brought over the PRD (it is led by "Rubber band man" René Bejarano and his wife Dolores Padierna), it may be a price worth paying for the PRD if it wants to establish itself as a modern, socially liberal, left-wing party.
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