PRI mayor leaves Acapulco in shambles

Manuel Añorve Baños was PRI mayor of Acapulco from 2009 until March 2012, when he stepped down to compete for a seat in the national Chamber of Deputies. He also competed unsuccessfully for the Guerrero governorship, and judging by his disastrous administration in the city of Acapulco, Guerrero residents can be quite happy that Añorve is not their leader.

The left won Acapulco in the July elections, but already now it has been revealed they will inherit a debt of at least 1.5 billion pesos. Worse still in the short run, already now 5,000 city employees are left without pay, as Añorve spent all the money set aside for them.

It's a strange world where an utterly incompetent mayor manages to be rewarded with a seat at the national congress, when his incompetence should instead have served to remove him from politics and public administration altogether. Yet within the PRI, he was in practice promoted.

Hopefully he will do less damage as a federal deputy for the PRI than as mayor of Acacpulco.

Source:
Acapulco: crisis de deuda mantiene sin salarios a 5 mil empleados municipales. La Jornada, Sept. 1, 2012.

Guerrero: Gas station employee dies after students burned down station

There were many tragic stories from Guerrero recently, and what deservedly got the most attention was the gunning down of two students.

There is another side to this story, though, which only makes it more intrinsically tragic: It seems by now beyond doubt that the protesting students deliberately torched a PEMEX gas station. The employee got badly burnt trying to put out the flames to avoid a full explosion.

Yet due to his burns, he died just days ago in a Guerrero hospital.

The shooting deaths of the students was roundly and justifiably condemned. Yet we have heard very little on the death of this innocent worker. Just as one asks for the heads of the Guerrero police who shot the students, will any of the thugs responsible for this murder ever be held accountable?

The dead students in Guerrero

It seems prudent to withhold judgment on who is to blame for what happened in Guerrero two days ago. What is abundantly clear is that it should never have happened in the first place: Two students dead and more than a dozen wounded following a highway protest.

It was hardly the first time students from the Ayotzinapa teacher school in Guerrerohave been blocking the Autopista del Sol, the highway running from Mexico City to Acapulco, Guerrero. Yet it is the first time it turned deadly: "Someone" - state police, federal police, provocateurs - fired upon students and graduates of Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos who were demanding reuctions in tuition as well as guaranteed teaching jobs after graduation.

Dramatic videos have been released by the Guerrero state government, eager to put the blame on federal police, that also clearly seems to show the students torching a PEMEX gas station.

Yet the federal police have responded forcefully, claiming rather that the shots were fired by Guerrero state police in civilian clothing.

Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero fired his attorney general, Alberto López Rosas, as it became clear that it contrary to his early claims, video recordings showed that the state police was fully armed. Aguirre also fired the secretary and sub secretary of public security, Ramón Almonte Borja and general Ramón Arreolaos respectively, to "facilitate the investigation."

Students who torch a gas station can hardly be expected to treated with kid gloves. I would never defend what appears to be, from the video images released, the beating and kicking of captured students, though it should also be pretty clear that if you block a highway and then torch a gas station with Molotov cocktails, the encounter with the police is not likely to be pretty.

But gunning down students - firing your guns at a civilian crowd that in no case appears to be a physical threat to the safety of the officers - is a criminal act for which the guilty parties, whoever they are, must be made to pay. This should never have had to come to this.

PRI federal deputy kidnapped

I can't recall when this happened last, and certainly not in this legislature: PRI federal deputy Moisés Villanueva, from Guerrero, has been kidnapped for 10 days. 

Details are very sketchy, and the PRI legislative group is keeping a lid on the whole thing at the request of the deputy's family.

The deputy was, as the expression goes, levantado by armed men when he was visiting his district, Tlapa de Comonfort. No calls for ransom have been made.

When Milenio newspaper sought to investigate, they were chased away from the area by AK-47 wielding men.

Academic analyses of the 2011 Guerrero election

Issue 167 of El Cotidiano, a social science-politics journal published by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, has a special issue on the 2011 governor and state election of Guerrero.

Email registration is required, but the site is entirely free - learning of the perspectives of Mexican political scientists and analysts is a a refreshing alternative to the U.S.-centered political science literature.

Deep cover-up in Guerrero: Murdered Armando Chavarría's file disappears

A new and drastic turn in the investigation of murdered PRD politician Armando Chavarría, who was head of Guerrero's state congress, and likely would have been governor now had unknown assassins not executed him in his car, right in front of his house.

Now, Alberto López Rosas, who is head of the Guerrero prosecutor's office, informed that the expediente or file that contained the details of the investigation into Chavarría's murder, has simply disappeared. 

It should be recalled that less than a month ago,  now ex-governor Zeferino Torreblanca claimed the case to be "99 percent solved." 

What is Torreblanca, who clearly seems to be the ultimate responsible for the disappearance of the papers, hiding?

The costs of militarization: In Guerrero, president of Congress abused by army

I've driven through many military checkpoints in Guerrero state and been pulled over by a couple, but thankfully never experienced this: Faustino Soto Ramos, until recently a federal deputy and now president of the state congress of Guerrero, says soldiers abused him verbally, fired their weapons in the ground to scare him, and hit him a few times, in front of his own vehicle. As the legislator noted,

"If the president of the Congress is treated like this, imagine ordinary citizens."

An act of apparent political vengeance: PAN loses party registry in Guerrero

In the state of Guerrero, where PAN in last year's gubernatorial election the end declined for winning PRD candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the state's electoral institute, Instituto Electoral del Estado de Guerrero (IEEG), has canceled PAN's party registry in the state as well as the payment of public funds to the party.

The reason? According to IEEG, is is simply because the PAN, quite likely due to declining for the PRD, only achieved 2.5 percent of the vote in the state.

PAN, however, accuse the IEEG of "political vengeance" given PAN's support of the PRD. It is not hard to see the point: While the 2.5-percent rule is certainly valid, PAN does, however, remain a national party, and the minimum-support stipulation arguably then does not apply.

Ángel Aguirre, governor

Ángel Aguirre assumed as governor of Guerrero Friday, an event, which was attended by range of PRD and aliancista governors, and Interior Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora.

His predecessor, Zeferino Torreblanca, didn't even bother showing up for the ceremony

First order of the new government: Signing an agreement with Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard to set up the Metrobus system in Guerrero. Expect more to follow soon: During his campaign, Aguirre often spoke of copying Mexico City's very successful social programs, some set up by AMLO, others developed by Ebrard. He may in the end prove some of his critics wrong and do govern from the center-left.

The Guerrero Green Party water sports scandal

More on this outrageous scandal in Guerrero:

Federal secretary of health, José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, lamented that a Fernando Reina Iglesias, president of the Environment Commission in the Acapulco city council and a member of the Green Party to boot, had used a state helicopter for personal recreation. How about having him arrested?

The helicopter was purchased in order to help marginalized indigenous communities gain access to health facilities. Now, it turns while Reina Iglesias was instead repeatedly using the helicopter training to break the Guinness speed record on water skiing behind a helicopter, in the state of Guerrero, 126 poor women died in remote communities for lack of sufficient medical attention during their pregnancy.

Aguirre promises 60% of positions for PRD, and will join the party

Ángel Aguirre Rivero, governor-elect of Guerrero, appeared at the national council meeting of PRD this weekend, where he even declared he would join the party as a member - in contrast to outgoing Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, a businessman who ran as a PRD candidate yet neither joined the party or in the end governed according to its principles. 

As for Aguirre, his statements seemed to go against those who merely dismissed his victory as one for the PRI and not the PRD, given Aguirre´s admittedly very recent membership in the party. Like scores of politicians before him, he ditched the party when it failed to nominate him for its gubernatorial candidate. 

Yet Aguirre declared that 60 percent of the government positions would go to the PRD, including the crucial portfolios of Attorney General; secretary of health; and secretary of social development. 

More important still, he made it emphatically clear that he will back the PRD in 2012 (despite his earlier friendship with Enrique Peña Nieto), whoever will win the party´s nomination. 

Aguirre's is a shock victory: PRD-left coalition candidate wins by +13%

The PREP, or the preliminary results program of the Guerrero state electoral institute,  is now 99.3 percent completed, and Ángel Aguirre Rivero is ahead 55.95 to 42.7 for Manuel Añorve Baños.

To his discredit, Manuel Añorve put up a charade merely minutes after the polls closed, where he declared himself a winner.

This is an election with many clear winners - Aguirre, Jesús Ortega, Marcelo Ebrard, campaign chief Jésus Zambrano, DIA coordinator Manuel Camacho, etc - and many losers - Beatriz Paredes, Enrique Peña Nieto, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, Fernando Castro Trenti, and, to be sure, the new president-elect of the PRI, Humberto Moreira.

Yet lest we forget: Despite dire warnings, grounded in real events, of election violence, there were few major disturbances on election day - no murders of campaign activists or violence against voters. Whatever one think of the election results and the candidates: One clear winner is Guerrero democracy.

Ángel Aguirre wins in Guerrero

All pollsters report that Ángel Aguirre's advantage is outside the margin of error; while the counting continues, it is all but certain that the candidate of the left coalition has won the Guerrero gubernatorial elections.

See Consulta Mitofsky, which is projecting Aguirre winner here.

See the PREP where live results are coming in here.

This is an absolutely remarkable comeback for the PRD and the left coalition behind Aguirre, and a stunning defeat for PRI, as well as Enrique Peña Nieto, which had up until relatively recently taken their victory for granted.

For the record: Manuel Añorve Baños has also declared himself the winner....

Last-ditch dirty tricks by PRI: Robocalls and erroneous voting instructions

Yet another fake edition of the La Jornada newspaper appeared this week in Guerrero, where the "front page" called upon voters to mark on the ballot both the party logos for PRD and PAN in order to vote for Aguirre. This, of course, would invalidate the vote itself, as one can only vote for one option - while the PAN candidate declined in favor of the PRD candidate, this came to late to print new election material - which is, of course, the very intent of whoever is behind the fake newspaper.

In addition, the real La Jornada reports of robocalls made in favor of PRI candidate Manuel Añorve Baños, as well as anonymous calls asking people not to leave their house to vote as things are about to "get ugly" in their area.

Dirty tricks to the very end.

Mere days before Guerrero election, AMLO cries "treason" - why?

The timing may certainly seem peculiar, even if it was in response to a current event: Mere days to go before the Guerrero election, after it was known that PAN candidate Marcos Efrén Parra would decline in favor of Ángel Aguirre Rivero, AMLO immediately pronounced that the hastily patched PAN-PRD agreement was "treason" - a term AMLO tends to hurl around at anything he is in discordance with.

Note that the PRD-PAN hardly even agreed to an "alliance" in Guerrero, these intra-party alliances forged elsewhere that AMLO so ardently opposes, yet rather that the PAN candidate would decline in favor of the PRD candidate, asking his voters to cross the ballot for PRD rather than PAN (it is too late to remove Parra from the ballot).

What good does this serve? While it is hardly possible to measure the impact, clearly AMLO's disqualifications do not benefit the Aguirre campaign, but harm it. AMLO, to recall, earlier even noted his support for Aguirre, and while he failed to campaign for him (Aguirre didn't want to sign the "10 commandments" AMLO has obligated candidates elsewhere to agree to, as he simply didn't agree with several of them, such as the cancellation of a major hydroelectric dam project).

Yet AMLO's decision, which can only hurt Aguirre's chances, do follow their own logic: He would rather see a PAN-PRD alliance fail than to be successful, as he has staked pretty much his entire political capital on opposing them.

In the process, he is, of course, running the PRI's errand. The El Universal headline that reported on AMLO's condemnation is very, very telling in this regard: "AMLO and Peña Nieto criticize the Guerrero alliances." Unlikely bedfellows, yet bedfellows all the same.

CSIS Mexico election analysis by George Grayson below par

One may forgive a couple of the inaccuracies in the most recent publication from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) on Mexico, "Hemisphere Focus: Mexico's 2011 Gubernatorial Elections and their Impact on Drug Policy," such as naming PRD's Alejandro Encinas a "Senator" (he is a national deputy) and Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo the party's "leader in the Chamber of Deputies" - that is actually Encinas' job.

Yet where author George Grayson  - a senior scholar on Mexico, yet one who has grown ever more stridently nationalistic, ideological, and contemptuous of the object of his study throughout the years  - truly confounds me is his assertion that in Guerrero, which is holding gubernatorial elections this Sunday,

"The outcome will be a win-win situation for the PRI and Enrique Peña Nieto, who has ties to both top contenders."

Come again? Yes, while it is true Peña Nieto has ties to Aguirre, this is one of the most fought-over elections in recent history, and the Mexico State governor has invested a ton of time and resources behind the Añorve candidacy. A loss for Añorve would be an absolutely brutal blow to both PRI and Peña Nieto, in my opinion.  I really don't get how Grayson (a man whose own biographical entry refers to him as "Mr. Mexico," and who has done "more than 1,000 research trips" to Mexico) can see it otherwise, and certainly not as a "win-win" situtation.

Guerrero elections: PAN candidate declines in favor of Ángel Aguirre Rivero,

Some notable news from Guerrero: PAN gubernatorial candidate Marcos Efrén Parra announced that he would decline in favor of the left coalition candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero, who most polls have ahead PRI-candidate Manuel Añorve Baños. I am not sure that this is an automatic gain for Aguirre - polls had Aguirre at the exact same percentage, 51 percent to 43, even if Parra would decline. But clearly, for Aguirre and the PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition, this is welcome news.
And I don't think it was merely a "personal decision" of Parra - even though his action was ostensibly due to Aguirre's incorporation of several of his proposals - a migrants institute, and a bank for women - into his platform.

Guerrero gubernatorial elections: 7-point lead for Ángel Aguirre Rivero

Ahead of next Sunday's election, the campaign to be Guerrero's next governor is drawing to a close.
Today's El Universal reveals a 7-percent lead for Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the candidate of of a coalition of the left over PRI-candiate Mannuel Añorve Baños. This is truly an upset; Guerrero was one of the states, given the misrule of Zeferino Torreblanca, the PRI just a few months ago had chalked up as a very likely win.

Claudia Corichi García's drunk calling; Amalia García ignores legal deadline

Claudia Corichi García is the daughter of until rather recently governor of Zacatecas, Amalia García Medina. She is a national senator of the PRD, and has past years faced quite a few charges of nepotism, of being utterly unqualfified for a senator (the bar is admittedly low), and of abusing her position for own gains - though she has never been convicted of any wrongdoing. Yet her critics found further ammunition this weekend: An intercepted telephone call where Corichi, according to some reports "in a state of inebriation," offers the PRD-PT-Convergencia candidate Ángel Aguirre to send 100 "volunteers." Aguirre responds by stating a desire for "sweets and books" to be handed out.

There are many angles here: It just happens to be that the phone conversation was leaked after a barrage of evidence has surfaced for the active and illegal -and far worse- intermission of other PRI governors, chiefly Enrique Peña Nieto, in the election. It should also be worrisome for Aguirre and his campaign that his phone conversations are obviously tapped, either by PRI directly or certainly by collaborators of the party. Yet in the end it is also an indictment of the morals of Claudia Corichi. Despite the relatively innocuous transgression, her attempted intermission (in return for what?) comes at time when her mother is facing her own, and far more serious, woes: This weekend was the deadline for the former Zacatecas governor to come up with evidence she claimed would fully dispel the many claims of embezzlement she has been facing from the new state administration. Guillermo Huizar, the state comptroller, said his office had not received any documents. That means in practice that the former governor may face legal sanctions in a few weeks' time.

It would be too cheap with a "the apple doesn't fall far" comment here, especially as none of the two - mother or daughter - has actually been convicted of any wrongdoing. Yet Claudia Corichi's drunk calling offering help to the Guerrero candidate certainly does little good for her own reputation or that of her mother.

Fernando Castro Trenti admits he was wrong, then jumps on another stupid claim

To his credit, Senator Fernando Castro Trenti admitted that the PRD activist Guillermo Sánchez Nava, who was nearly beaten to death by presumed PRI thugs in Guerrao, was actually attacked and that it was not faked. He could hardly do anything else: Sánchez Nava's own children publicly presented his medical diagnosis. It was simply idiotic to jump on such a baseless claim to begin with, but fine: He rectifies.

Yet then comes the next claim, worthy of a U.S. tea bagger: A few days ago, "someone" (very likely the Manuel Añorve Baños campaign) had a fake La Jornada newspaper made that proclaimed that the PRD candidate admitted he lost a recent gubernatorial debate. It was all made up; the newspaper was fake.

Yet the good senator, rather than having learned from postulating outrageous claims he can't back up, mistakes, now claims, counter intuitively and without a shred of evidence, that the fake paper was actually made by the PRD. Will an apology be forthcoming this time as well?