Calderón as Churchill? Or "an act of megalomania"?

Calderón's recent comparison of himself with Winston Churchill, and Mexico's fight with the drug cartels with Churchill's fight against the Nazis, predictably drew a lot of fire from the opposition, and rightly so: The comparison was bizarre, to put it mildly. 


Armando Ríos Piter, PRD's group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, put it best: "an act of megalomania"

Ebrard strikes back against AMLO: Armando Ríos Piter new parliamentary leader

After receiving a heavy pummeling by AMLO, who forced Ebrard to drop his support for a PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State, Ebrard struck back: Armando Ríos Piter will replace Alejandro Encinas as the head of PRD's parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies. Ilich Augusto Lozano will be the vice coordinator.

The former is very close to Ebrard; the latter is a member of the social-democratic Nueva Izquierda faction opposed to AMLO.

PRD internal election: Despite outcome, election itself big step forward

One thing to note: PRD finally moved away from the highly destructive method of electing its leadership by mass party votes, which with no single exception has ended in turmoil, fights, fraud accusations, and general disaster for party unity and the party's general image. Now, the PRD's national council instead voted - and access was restricted to the plenary only through an emergency exit, credentials checked and double checked, and after depositing the vote, each councilor had indelible ink applied to the thumb, to avoid another cochinero. And when all is said and done: It worked.

First round:  154 votes for Jesús Zambrano, 111 for Dolores Padierna, and 43 for Armando Ríos Piter.
As no 2/3 majority reached - and would not be reached for either candidate - a deal was struck for a Zambrano-Padierna compromise ticket. This received 233 votes in favor and 36 against.

The PRD also voted to ban any alliance with PAN and PRI in 2012 - so now that's official, despite AMLO's insistence that he has secret information that PRD wants a PRD-PAN formula in 2012.

Other than that, the party postponed remaining business, such as who will fill the posts on its national Secretariat, and its National Political Commission. Given the drama over the weekend, no wonder.

Governor Zeferino Torreblanca of Guerrero is a very, very angry man

Days after the PRD made official its expected postulation of Ángel Aguirre as its candidate for governor in Guerrero, outgoing governor Zeferino Torreblanca amply demonstrated that he is very angry with the postulation. Torreblanca has been a very controversial governor of Guerrero, and appointed very few PRD cadres to important government positions, yet now declared, ahead of the very likely declaration that PAN (of little presence in Guerrero) will also line up behind Ángel Aguirre, that a PRD-PAN alliance is "a corporation" formed by "bandits, mercenaries, poisoners and cynics that are leaving with bags full of money," and launches a long tirade against the PRD.

Why so angry? The real reason is that Torreblanca's anointed one, Armando Ríos Piter, failed to make the cut in the poll that the PRD arranged to measure support for its precandidates, and the party thus chose Ángel Aguirre Rivero, until now a PRI senataor, as its gubernatorial candidate. In Mexican politics, there is little that angers outgoing governors more than failing to install their chosen successor. Expect Torreblanca to back Manuel Añorve Baños, the PRI candidate, in retaliation.

Torreblanca is not the only one to criticize the PAN-PRD alliances. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas yet again noted his opposition, as he declared this and other possible alliances in 2011 a "failure" and "a step backward." This is a position he shares with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, his one-time political godson, and former president Vicente Fox.