Dramatic turn in Mexico media scandal: MVSgate

This is truly preposterous: The director of the MVS Comunicaciones media group, whose TV concession provides a rare alternative to Mexico's electronic media duopoly dominated by the infamous Televisa and TV Azteca, has confirmed what many has suspected: The PAN government of  Felipe Calderón has launched a political attack on the station.

The government's decision to put up MVS's concession claiming that it is under-utilizing its 2.5 GHz bandwidth appears only to have been an excuse, as MVS head Joaquín Vargas Guajardo confirmed that the government told him its license would only be renewed if he fired the renowned investigative journalist Carmen Aristegui, as well as to desist from an earlier MVS complaint against a proposed Televisa purchase of Iusacell, a cell phone provider.

This hit the front pages of El Universal today. With Vargas' claim, the MVS scandal - let's just call it MVSgate - drastically deepens. According to Vargas, Javier Lozano, then federal secretary of work, told him, "we've found that you're 2.5 GHz project has merit, but if you rehire that journalist, your project is fucked and you can forget about this government until its last day."

What a way to go out for Calderón: Political persecution of the media.

Source:
Se agrava crisis por la banda ancha. El Universal, Aug. 16, 2012

ILO rejects SME complaint: A victory for Calderón

The Geneva-based International Labor Federation (ILO) notably rejected a 2009 complaint by the Mexican electricians union, Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME), over the decision by President Felipe Calderón  to liquidate the state-owned Luz y Fuerza electric company, regarding this to have been the legal prerogative of the Mexican state.

This is a big setback for SME leader  Martín Esparza Flores, and a victory for Calderón and Labor Secretary Javier Lozano.

Will Javier Lozano's calls for prison terms in Sabinas mine disaster extend to himself?

Following the recent mine disaster in Sabinas, Coahuila, where 14 workers died, Javier Lozano Alarcón, Mexico's secretary of labor, recently huffed and puffed and demanded prison terms for whomever found responsible.

Given the persistent lack of thorough labor safety inspections, and the issuing of a record number of concessions with minimum oversight during his tenure as secretary of labor, will the call for arrests eventually also extend to Lozano himself?

A good background article on the Coahuila mining industry here.

Conspiracy Theorists of the Right: Javier Lozano

Javier Lozano, secretary of work and social welfar and someone who has strongly expressed his interest in being PAN's presidential candidate in 2012, claimed that PRI and PRD agreed to bury PRI's and PAN's suggested labor reform, in return for ending a PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State.

This is certainly one of the wilder climes I've heard for a while, and certainly from the political right.
I find Lozana in general to be a particularly unappealing candidate, and as much for his personal ways of being - discourses, behavior in public, arrogance, etc - as of his actual policies. Unless he come up with anything more concrete than this wild claim, to this I can add: Conspiracy theorist.