What's next for Ebrard: The UN and Socialist International

Marcelo Ebrard, who in December will step down after six largely highly successful years as Mexico City mayor, already has a new gig lined up: The United Nations' Global Network of Safer Cities program, a recognition of his tenure where he kept organized crime at bay. From the UN program's Web site:

The Safer Cities Programme was launched in 1996 to address urban violence by developing a prevention strategy at city level

The position is from 2012 to 2016. Yet he has already started a parallel job that will end two years later in 2018: His second attempt at winning the left's nomination for its presidential candidate in 2018, when Enrique Peña Nieto steps down. He will very likely need to wrest that from AMLO in what would be his third attempt.

Oh, and he will also be vice president of the Socialist International, another recognition of his work of making Mexico City also the most socially liberal (in laws, that is) city in Latin America. He follows after PRD founder Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, who was also vice president of the SI, and who is now moreover an honorary vice president of the organization of left-leaning parties of the world.

Source:
Encarga la ONU comité a Ebrard. El Universal, Sept. 4, 2012
Nombran a Ebrard vicepresidente de la Internacional Socialista. Proceso Online, Aug. 31, 2012

Gay rights in Mexico: How far it has come

Call it blatant politicking if you may, but the picture below is in any regard quite a measure on how far (parts of) Mexico has come on gay rights. Contrast it with 1994, when then-PRI lackey in Veracruz, Miguel Angel Yunes, sent a squad of drag queens to "embarrass" the left's presidential candidate,  Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, to make him appear as backed by gay activists. It made the national news.

Here is Miguel Mancera, the PRD's candidate to be mayor in Mexico City, posing with activists from the LGTB community:

El Universal

Times have changed, and not all for the bad.

Source:  Mancera busca ampliar la lucha contra el sida. El Universal, May 18, 2012.

Cárdenas strongly backs AMLO - and gay marriage!

Now this is what I call a remarkable evolution, and for both parties involved.
First, hats off to Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas: In his manifest "A Mexico for all," he comes strongly out in favor of gay rights, including marriage and adoption, as well as reproductive rights for women. Bravo! The evolution of Cárdenas toward the agenda of the modern, international and socially liberal left is very welcome, and speaks volumes of this man's character.

Yet there is more: It is news in itself that AMLO and Cárdenas meet, given the bitter and likely consequential fights between them in the past (Had they been resolved in 2006, for instance, AMLO might now be president). They just did for the presentation of Cárdenas' project (available here), where the three-time presidential candidate now came out strongly in favor of AMLO's candidacy.

Yet then AMLO actually declares he supports Cárdenas' manifest, including all said socially liberal issues. This is nothing short of remarkable, given that AMLO has long been quite conservative on the social front, never touching the abortion issue and moreover operating actively against gay marriage in Mexico City (details to follow in my upcoming book).

Let's repeat it, as it begs so: AMLO declares in favor of promoting abortion rights and gay rights for his presidential campaign.

And a remarkable photo of left unity:

Terra

In terms of left evolution and left unity, the importance of these developments should not be understated. As Joe Biden would put it, it's a...

PAN leaves the Clouthiers out in the cold

Manuel Clouthier, commonly known as "Maquío," was the PAN's 1988 presidential candidate, and a very decent man - he actively joined the possible yet defrauded winner Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in denouncing the fraud, until his own party quieted him down and made deals with president-elect Carlos Salinas.

His family, from their stronghold in Sinaloa, has continued in politics (Maquio died in a mysterious car crash in 1989): Both his son Manuel and his daughter Tatiana have been active in the PAN.

Yet they have been highly critical of Calderón's armed onslaught against the drug cartels and the manner in which is being fought. That is likely the main cause why Manuel was recently rejected as a senate candidate for PAN for 2012, despite his very significant political weight in Sinaloa.

The fight has been long brewing with the PAN, and a break with this emblematic neopanista family with its party seems very imminent: Don't be surprised if in a few weeks we'll see Manuel Clouthier Carrillo as a candidate for AMLO's 2012 coalition. 

Three way race in Michoacán, the atypical state

Marcelo Ebrard and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas appeared with Silvano Aureoles Conejo, PRD's candidate for governor of Michoacán, for the campaign closing in Morelia, the state capital.

As this article in Milenio does a good job of outlining, this is truly a three-way race: PAN, PRI, and PRD all have a good chance of winning. PRD has the most extensive party structure and base, though it is hampered by the unpopular government of Leonel Godoy. PRI has the most money, and has been pouring in resources into the state, which it earlier declared as essential to winning the 2012 presidential race. PAN has the least developed party organization in Michoacán, but the candidate is president Calderón's sister, with big name recognition, and PAN has also dedicated enormous resources to win here, including repeated appearances by all its 2012 contenders. The PRD has complained that they have been competing not against a candidate, but against the federal government and its resources.

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas gets Mexico's highest medal, call for army to barracks

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas finally received the Medalla Belisario Domínguez, and used the occasion to call, in his speech, for  withdrawing the army in the fight against Mexico's drug cartels, and instead leave it to a civilian law enforcement body. Wise words.

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas receives highest Mexican civil award

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is, in the end, the 2011 recipient of the Belisario Domínguez medal.

Many in PAN were opposed, yet they disliked even more the second strong candidate, Supreme Court minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, but she became unpalatable to the social conservatives in PAN following her recent vote against the extremist state-level "life-from-conception" abortion legislation.

Felicitaciones, Ingeniero. 

Vicente Fox, a "pathological clown" - and a quote of the day

Former president Vicente Fox has been rambling on in the media the past days, shooting off in all directions. He's criticized the Federal Electoral Institute, and (there's much right in his criticism) for its arguably excessive regulation of primary debates, but as IFE pointedly shot back, Fox should truly keep his mouth shut when it comes to anything related to IFE - after all, his blatant intervention in the 2006 election was much of the cause for the 2007-8 electoral reform in the first place.

Then, he has the guts to sling dirt on Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, three-time presidential candidate and founder of the PRD, arguing that giving the Senate's Belisario Domínguez order to him would degrade its value.

I'm a longtime critic of Cárdenas for many reasons, but let us put things in perspective: This is a man who constantly fought for democracy, always firm (or rigid) in his convictions, and whose ardent opposition to the PRI dictatorship opened up political space for clowns like Fox to become a governor of Guanajuato, and then president, in the first place. To hear Fox, someone who blatantly sought to debase Mexico's institutions through launching the amazingly idiotic impeachment process against Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2005, with the admitted purpose of barring him from the 2006 presidential election, almost defies belief, hadn't it been for the fact that we are now well accustomed to Fox' many utterly stupid comments, which seems to multiply by each passing year since he left the presidency.

I find PRD president Jesús Zambrano's characterization of Vicente Fox as a "pathological clown" quite accurate.

PRI's Senator Francisco Labastida, the opponent of Fox and Cárdenas in the 2000 presidential election, and one of the absolutely more reasonable PRI legislators, said in a response to Fox's verbal diarrhea:

"Again he lost the golden opportunity to shut the hell up."

Quote of the day.

Both AMLO and Cárdenas back PRD candidate in Micoacán - though separately

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas appeared with the PRD's candidate for governor, Silvano Aureoles Conejo, for a campaign event in Morelia; in nearby Pátzcuaro, AMLO held a rally for his Morena movement, also appearing with Aureoles.

Their paths did not cross.

Let's see if the support of both the PRD's historic caudillos is enough.

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.

Why Silvano Aureoles and the PRD may win in Michoacán

Here are what seems to me to be two very important factors why Silvano Aureoles may still pull off a win in Michoacán in November: As opposed to in 2007, when only Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas campaigned for Leonel Godoy, Senator Aureoles is backed by AMLO and his Morena movement, as witnessed by their common appearance this Friday. Then, on Sunday Cárdenas as well appeared together with Aureoles.

Given the continued popularity of Cárdenas and AMLO with much of the party base, at the very least this will likely drive up turnout, and help Aureoles secure his victory in what will be in any event an extraordinary and quite likely tight race.

Cárdenas against national poll to decide 2012 PRD candidacy

Much talk of the comments allegedly attributable to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, reported in Reforma, where he says that no matter what, he will be a 2012 candidate, either of one, two, or three parties. I have for a long time believed (and so has Joaquín López-Dóriga), that there is no way AMLO will not run in 2012, regardless of any agreement with Marcelo Ebrard.

Speaking of PRD caudillos and presidential campaigns:

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the man who enticed AMLO to leave the PRI only after the 1988 fraud and only aftr PRI had denied him the PRI candidacy for governor of Tabasco in the fall of 1988, opined that he does not support the idea of a national poll to decide who will be the PRD's 2012 candidate, preferring instead some kind of party vote. I am repeating myself ad nauseam here as well, but I remain convinced that he still is far from giving up the idea of another Cárdenas as president of Mexico.

Why does Rosario Robles have her own column?

I find it inexplicable that Rosario Robles has her own column in Milenio, to be frank.

Robles, the second female president of the PRD who resigned abruptly among a massive corruption scandal, resurfaced as a columnist after keeping a very low profile for years, and for a good reason: She has repeatedly shown an amazing lack of judgment, politically, professionally, and personally.

As caretaker of Mexico City whenCuauhtémoc Cárdenas stepped down after barely two years to make yet another (his third) run for the presidency, she went on a wild spending spree on publicity and privileges for government functionaries, and was notorious for her personalistic and confrontational style. AMLO, to his credit, immediately cancelled the many dubious city contracts she had signed, when he took over in 2000.

As president of PRD, for 16 controversial months, she moved the party in a confrontational and radical direction - her university militancy was with a Maoist grouping - and stepped down after a poor electoral showing in 2003, despite the PRD's debt doubling to at least half a billion pesos under her watch.

But the real scandal came later, when it was revealed that her lover Carlos Ahumada, a wealthy businessman, had taken over parts of the PRD’s debt, and later sought to blackmail the party by making this public. Robles first denied this, but was forced to admit it when evidence surfaced. A PRD commitee found Robles criminally responsible. 

(This became part of the 2004 video scandals, which proved disastrous to the PRD and destroyed much of its credibility, when AMLO's secretary René Bejarano was caught on camera (set up by Ahumada) stuffing wads of money in a bag, ostensibly for "party promotion.")

Now, Robles argues in her column that a PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State would have been useless, as the parties together were still beat by more than 30 points. This ignores completely two important points: An early demonstration of unity by PRD-PAN and a credible candidate might have created a very different dynamic and polarized the election. In turn, this might very well have elevated the turnout, which was the lowest in decades. It was exactly the much higher turnout, undoubtedly generated by voters actually believing the opposition candidate stood a chance and thus bothered to show up, which nailed the PRD-PAN triumphs in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa last year. 

And now, Robles calls for "congruence" and for the "responsible" for the 2011 defeats to be punished.

I repeat: Why does Rosario Robles have her own column, and why on earth should anybody listen to her?

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas: No fraud in 2006

In an interview with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas late 2007, I asked him about the differences between the 1988 and 2006 federal elections. He told me what he just told Milenio yesterday: While there was a fraud in 1988, there was none in 2006.

His comments, made in Guanajuato, followed a visit there by none else than Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who argued, again without a shred of evidence, that PAN in Guanajuato contributed in 2006 300,000 fraudulent votes.

Mexico State polls: Alejandro Encinas rising

Following the notable display of party unity Monday, where all of PRD's main leaders, including Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Marcelo Ebrard, and Andrés Manuel López Obrado, came together to promote his candidacy, Encinas is rising in the polls. Yes, the difference is vast to the PRI candidate, but the mere campaign launch event led to a 1.5-point rise, and Encinas is now at 20.7 percent, while the PRI candidate is slowly dropping.

Alejandro Encinas achieved the "impossible" - reunite AMLO and Cárdenas

In his first campaign appearance in Mexico State, PRD-PT-Convergencia gubernatorial candidat Alejandro Encinas already achieved quite a feat: To make Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Andrés Manuel López Obrador appear together on stage in his support, and as well Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and, to add, PRD national president Jesús Zambrano, of the social democratic Nueva Izquierda faction long in confrontation with AMLO.

This truly is quite a feat - I cannot even remember when AMLO and Cárdenas shared a stage, let alone one where the main factions of the party appear together. Now will Encinas manage an upset win in the state as well? At the risk of getting carried away:  That scenario just became just a tad more possible, given this remarkable display of party unity.

The historic photo, from Milenio:

PRD campaign in Mexico State: Remarkable unity

In a remarkable display of unity, PRD leader in Mexico State, Luis Sánchez Jiménez, appeared together with the left coalition candidate Alejandro Encinas for the start of the latter's campaign.

Remarkable, because Sánchez Jiménez, who was the vice president of the chamber of deputies and a man I had the pleasure of interviewing on many occasions, was also a big proponent of a PRD-PAN alliance in the state, and complained bitterly of the campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to scuttle said alliance, which he did succeed in doing.

Luis Sánchez was, to boot, appointed officially as Encinas' campaign coordinator, though it remains to be seen if this will merely be de jure rather than de facto - something akin to Jesús Ortega's position as the nominal head of AMLO's 2006 campaign.

Yet regardless, in Sánchez' words: "I am an institutional man and I think institutions is something that Mexican politics urgently needs."

¡Órale! If only the PRD had more people like Sánchez. You lose, but then you rally behind your party candidate regardless.

Also of note: El Universal reports that even Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas will appear with Encinas. While I regard a photo of AMLO-Encinas-Cárdenas a remote possibility, it would be of immense importance for the party, which still stands a chance, however small, of winning the state.

Happy Cinco de Mayo = Happy Birthday, PRD

Today is Cinco de Mayo, which is also the birthday of the PRD: The party was officially established on May 5, 1989, nearly a year after the 1988 electoral fraud that might or might not have deprived Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of the Mexican presidency.

As El Universal reports, the party is indeed undergoing a process of "repositioning," or the separation of waters between its main poles, which are now aligned essentially around either Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) or Marcelo Ebrard. Unless we will actually see the promise being kept - that either will step down in favor of the other who is ahead in the polls - it is hard to imagine that the left will arrive at the 2012 election united.

As it were, I'll be in El Paso, TX for the day - and I will cheer both the Mexican army's victory over  the French in Puebla on May 5, 1862, but also the birth of Mexico's only real leftwing party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática. Happy birthday, PRD.

Cárdenas goes after AMLO

While relations between the two old caudillos appeared to have been somewhat improving, here comes a political attack: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas criticized AMLO's recently pronounced political project for 2012.

I remain fully convinced that Cárdenas has not given up on his own ambitions, and the substance of his criticism of AMLO's program to me only confirms it: He criticized AMLO for not giving his opinion on the PEMEX incentive contracts, which Cárdenas fully opposes, though he knows fully well that AMLO put up quite a show with his "Brigades" in "defense" of the petroleum, holding a "referendum" on whether to take action and then physically seeking to "take" the Senate to block the passing of this very mild (and in my opinion sorely needed) reform to PEMEX in 2008. Second, he criticizes AMLO for not saying anything about Libya (!) and what he calls "preventive wars." Much can indeed be said for and against the attack on Gadaffi's Libya, but to attack AMLO for this - a man, let's recall, who has absolutely no interest in foreign affairs - seems,well, petty.

But again: I don't think this is meant as any substantively based criticism of AMLO's program, but merely as a first strike against AMLO's political project, that is, his presidential candidacy, which Cárdenas might very well, in one for or the other, try to contest.

"Other figures may emerge"

With the risk of boring readers with yet another repetition of an oft-noted point: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas will seek to be president in 2012, or to place his son as the candidate.

Interviewed in regards to PRD's most recent crisis, which is really just a reenactment of the perennial fault line that has divided the party for more than two decades - to be an institutionalized party, or a personalistic movement-party - Cuauhtémoc had the following to say, in his typical cardenasspeak:

"for 2012, other figures might surge that could become a unifying factor in the unity of the widest and most progressive force."

Gee, I wonder who Cuauhtémoc might have in mind.