AMLO's 10 Commitments. Mexico State tour completed; new one to start soon.

For all those who might have harbored a suspicion that AMLO might be bluffing  - he never does - with his earlier announcement that he would back a separate candidate in the upcoming Mexico State gubernatorial election, Sunday's rally in Toluca should lay these doubts to rest. Having completed yet another tour of Mexico State's 124 municipalities, the last one remaining was the state capital. Here, in front of a crowd of thousands of supporters, he announced his candidate will be chosen by a "poll." As it stands, the four choices appear to be Horacio Duarte (PRD), Alejandro Gertz Manero (Convergencia), Yeidckol Polenvsky (PRD), and Óscar González Yáñez (PT). The chosen one will need to literally sign on to AMLO's program - talk about candidate independence! - that he has deemed "10 Commitments." They are:

• Promote job creation
• Establish unemployment insurance
• Loans and grants for rural producers
• Meal centers/eateries
• Universal pension to elderly
• Medical care to people without social security
• Scholarships to students from poor education
• Construction and improvement of housing in deprived areas
• Programme of public services in poor neighborhoods
• Better roads and construction of three subway lines

As soon as the candidate is chosen - and this could be by opinion poll, a primary, or, in AMLO's conception of democracy, a public plebiscite of hand-raising - AMLO will hit the road again for another round of Mexico State's 125 municipalities. He is truly putting everything in this fight against his old party, and clearly believes that should a PAN-PRD candidacy, to which he is utterly opposed, come out winning, his chances at the 2012 presidency are shot.

AMLO backs Horacio Duarte for Mexico State, rejects alliance with PAN with a new argument

Milenio reports that AMLO will be accompanied by Horacio Duarte when PRD's former presidential candidate this week will start another tour of each of Mexico's 125 municipalities. It's a strong indication that AMLO has decided on his chosen one to be PRD's candidate for governor (what will he do with Encinas - Mexico City again?). Duarte clearly has a party base in the PRD as part of his GAP group in Mexico State,  centered around Texcoco. Yet the problem is that Duarte failed to even get elected as federal deputy representing the district in last year's federal elections. He seems a far less weaker candidate than other PRD cadres such as current PRD Senator Héctor Bautista.

Regardless, AMLO, just like Enrique Peña Nieto, is continuing his offensive against any PRD-PAN coalition behind a common gubernatorial candidate, which to most observers appear the only chance to block Peña Nieto from installing an anointed successor when he steps down next year. AMLO's logic is increasingly tortured: While acknowledging the crucial importance of beating Peña Nieto, he announced that he opposes the alliances because he suspects that President Calderón will betray the PRD and in the end back Peña Nieto. That is, Mexico's national president, who is today more or less in trench warfare with the PRI and is desperate not to be the president who handed power back to PRI, is likely to double cross the PRD, so therefore the PRD should not join with the PAN...

If someone can explain the logic of AMLO's thinking, I would be most grateful.

Will AMLO succeed in tumbling the PAN-PRD alliances?

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto used the occasion of his fifth Report to the Mexico State Congress to attack the PAN-PRD alliances. Peña Nieto, in the clearest yet sign of his fear of such an opposition alliance, absurdly and shamelessly likened these alliances by two democratic parties to a threat equivalent to that of organized crime. It was a moment of infamy.


Yet Peña Nieto may soon breathe a sigh of relief: GAP, the Grupo de Acción Política, which claims a majority on the PRD's Mexico State council, declared its opposition to a PAN-PRD alliance and a common candidate in next year's state elections to replace Peña Nieto's successor. GAP allied with current national PRD leader Jesús Ortega in 2008, yet now opposes Ortega's plans for a common candidate, and is reportedly backing AMLO's bid to be PRD's presidential candidate in 2012.  GAP, notably, wants its leader Horacio Duarte to be the PRD's gubernatorial candidate, and its recent opposition to the alliances has the semblance of a quid pro quo with AMLO's supporters. AMLO, to recall, has been adamantly against the PAN-PRD coalitions since the start, though several of his "devoted" followers such as the IDN faction, tacitly agreed to the alliances. Now, however, IDN and other corrientes are vocally denouncing them, in Mexico State and elsewhere, following AMLO's bidding. And it seems likely that GAP is now doing the same thing.


PRD national deputy and coordinator of its parliamentary group Alejandro Encinas, also a strong contender for the Mexico State nomination, somewhat bizarrely contested Peña Nieto arguing that the only threat to fear is the unity of the left, meaning PRD-PT-Convergencia. Yet Encinas knows very well that Peña Nieta was referring to a broader PAN-PRD alliance, and not just one by the three left parties.


Meanwhile, in the PRD proper, despite the huge success of the recent alliances in Oaxaca, Sinaloa, and Puebla, the more "radical" elements in the party such as the IDN and others are yet again  clamoring for Jesús Ortega to step down as party president. So much for party unity in the face of a clear adversary: In fine Stalinist tradition, the andremanualistas and opportunists of the party are at least as bent on  attacking the social-democratic wing of the PRD than either PRI or PAN, for that matter. 


Conspiracy journalist par excellence, Ricardo Alemán, claims that "it remains clear that there will be no PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State and in Guerrero, and with the help of PAN, PRI will snatch from PRD the states of Baja California Sur and Guerrero." 
This seems to me to be jumping the gun at this point, even for Alemán.