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.

Añorve does not accept defeat in Guerrero, but Peña Nieto is gracious in defeat

Manuel Añorve Baños lost with more than 13 points in Guerrero this Sunday, but has announced he does not accept the defeat, and say he will put any legal impugning of the election in the hands of PRI.

Far more statesmanlike is Enrique Peña Nieto, who does accept the defeat and goes as far as to congratulate winning candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero:_

What Guerrero experienced on Sunday was a celebration of democracy and that is the most important because one banished the idea that there would be a scene of violence, and fortunately there was not. It was an exercise in democracy and citizen participation in abundant display." 

Credit where credit's due.

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.

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.

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?

Añorve campaign repeats dirty tricks from last campaign: Fake newspapers

When Manuel Añorve ran for mayor of Acapulco in 2008, his supporters produced a fake version of the newspaper El Sur, where the front page declared in bold, "Walton recognizes the triumph of Añorve."

Now it seems they've done it again: Today's regional La Jornada edition had the following image:

The headline state, "Ángel Aguirre lose the debate," referring to the debate held the night before between Aguirre and Añorve, the two front runners to be the next governor of Guerrero.
The problem: The newspaper is fake, yet was distributed, in real-looking newsprint, to thousands of homes as well as newspaper stand, reportedly by Añorve activists.

The PRI campaign appears increasingly desperate as its once-safe Guerrero victory has turned into a very probable defeat, and a victory for Aguirre. They have a more than 8-decades long history of subverting democracy in Mexico; expect them to pull out many more dirty tricks before the election the end of this month.

Interview with Ángel Aguirre Rivero, ahead in polls for governor of Guerrero

Against the predictions of most political observers, Ángel Aguirre Rivero is seemingly ahead in the polls by a few percentage points, but ahead nonetheless, to be the next governor of Guerrero.

Here's a useful El Universal interview where he discusses his very recent past in the PRI, as well as how he regards himself ideologically: Of the moderate left.

Of note: He has subscribed to a long-time demand from the left to push for a new state constitution that would, significantly, include the mechanism of a recall referendum. Given the excessive length of Mexican governors' terms - most sit six years - I think this is a mechanism certainly worth considering.

(here's an interview with his main opponent,  Manuel Añorve Baños)

Surreal development in Guerrero campaign: PRI admits attack, then backtracks

A most extraordinary development in the Guerrero gubernatorial campaign:

Ernesto Vélez Memije is a member of Manuel Añorve Baños' campaign to be governor of Guerrero. Following the brutal attack that left a key PRD member of the opposing campaign of Ángel Aguirre Rivero in a coma, Vélez appeared on television and admitted that the attackers were priístas, but alleged that the PRD member, Guillermo Sánchez Nava, had actually "provoked" the attackers.

(PRD's campaign manager, Jesús Zambrano, has presented what he argues is a leaked PRI plan to use violence to destabilize Guerrero and suppress vote participation ahead of the elections)

Sánchez Nava, to recall, caught a group of apparent PRI sympathizers tearing down election material for Aguirre; when he photographed them, they beat him unconscious.

The interview as such was extremely important, even though Vélez' main point was in essence "Yes, but he made us do it, and it is really his fault."

Then happened the strangest thing. Vélez later the same day obviously regretted what he said, and now argued that Mario Moreno Arcos, a PRD federal deputy, had enticed him to admit the PRI attack, offering him a position in a future Aguirre cabinet. Beatriz Paredes Rangel, the national PRI leader, to her discredit also went on the offensive to deny that the attackers were from the PRI.

This case stinks to heaven. It seems so utterly clear that Vélez is lying - the gist of the interview was an attack on the PRD - with his claim that he was pressured/bribed to say what he did. At the very least, it would mean that he accepted the bribe, then regretted - hardly something that speaks well of him.
But again: The interview was above all an attack on the PRD, and it seems clear that higher ups pushed him to come up with this pretty crazy and absolutely unbelievable cover story.

The worst part:

How can Beatriz Paredes Rangel, of whom one might expect more dignified behavior, subscribe to what is obviously an outright lie, and a poor one at that? Note that new PRI president Humberto Moreira has kept his mouth pretty much tightly shut; his handling of this, his first crisis as PRD national leader, speaks very poorly of his judgment, while his failure to clearly and immediately condemn the political violence speaks ill of his moral backbone.

Repugnant behavior from the PRI; silence from the Mexican Michael Steele on Guerrero election events

As Gancho has noted, Humberto Moreira has been quite an act recently; since taking over as head of the PRI, he has seemed eager to make his mark as new party president, though in the process the rambunctious former governor of Coahuila has sounded a bit more than a cocky highschooler on the student board rather than the head of Mexico's largest party.

Yet given his verbosity, you might think he had a word or two to say of the recent disturbing events in Guerrero, where the PRD's representative to the state electoral council was beaten into a bloody pulp, and whose chances of survival are still 50-50.

- A call to calm tempers?
- A call to reject any violence?
- An apology?

No. Rather, Moreira has kept his usually big mouth pretty  much shut. Yet his fellow party members have not, when they rather should have.

* PRI Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones has called on the PRD to "not exploit the issue politically."
* PRI Senator and Secretary general Jesús Murillo Karam has attacked "opportunistic declarations."


And the kicker: The "Tiempos Mejores para Guerrero" coalition of Manuel Añorve Baños in Guerrero, which includes the PRI, the Green Party (PVEM) and the teacher party PANAL, suggests that the aggression against the PRD member might have been a set-up orchestrated by the PRD.

This from the "New PRI." After barely a week as party president, could the PRI under Moreira possibly sink any lower?

PRI thugs beat PRD legal representative into a coma in Guerrero

It's getting worse by the day, two weeks ahead of the gubernatorial elections in Guerrero:
Twenty PRI thugs attacked Guillermo Sánchez Nava, the PRD's representative on the state electoral institute of Guerrero, when he photographed  them tearing down electoral material belonging to Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the candidate of  a leftwing coalition opposing that of the PRI-Green Party-PANAL candidate Manuel Añorve Baños.

The PRI thugs were traveling in a truck with plates from Mexico State - run by PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto. Is this the help promised by new PRI president Humberto Moreira and Peña Nieto to do all they can to ensure Añorve's victory?

Note that the response from Efrén Leyva Acevedo, the PRI's leader in the state, was to accuse his opponents of politicizing the occurrence.

While one would think that x-rays of Sánchez Nava's fractured cranium would more than suffice, the PRI leader rather demanded more "evidence" for what had taken place.

Guns drawn, beating of reporters in Guerrero covering PRI event

A bad omen for the PRI's gubernatorial campaign in Guerrero: A part of the stage set up for the "Better times for Guerrero" candidate Manuel Añorve Baños collapsed, ruining the day as well for prominent guests such as the new leader of the PRI, Humberto Moreira, as well as Governor Enrique Peña Nieto. 


Yet what happened after speaks volumes of the face of the new PRI: The campaign event was in the hands of security personnel from Peña Nieto's Mexico State, including literally hundreds of agents dressed in white guayaberas. Yet when a sound tower collapsed over the audience, which hurt and blooded at least 20 people, Peña Nieto's security force were more busy pushing and beating up reporters trying to take pictures of the accident. One bodyguard pulled a gun on local photographer, while another tore a camera way from the La Jornada correspondent covering the event. 


The personnel then quickly washed away the blood from the pavement, with water and brooms. 


Former PRI governor of the state Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, who was forced out of office after mass public outcry following the infamous Aguas Blancas massacre in 1995, was also in the audience, though pointedly was not mentioned in Añorve's speech.   

Guerrero: Election for governor grows nastier with kidnap of Aguirre campaign

The most recent developments in Guerrero, ahead of the gubernatorial elections by the end of this month, are extremely worrisome:  Miguel Jaimes Palacios, former mayor of San Miguel Totolapan in the Tierra Caliente region  and the campaign manager of left coalition candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero in that area, was reported kidnapped by armed men. 

Yes, the Tierra Caliente region, close to Michoacán, is a violence-ridden area, but I find it hard to believe this is not connected to the ever-more-bitter campaign between  Ángel Aguirre and the PRI candidate Manuel Añorve Baños. 

PRI, meanwhile, expelled 11 high-profile party members, including a federal deputy, six local state legislators, and four muncipals councilor, from the party. The PRI's national excetutive committe (CEN) accused them of backing Aguirre. a former priísta. 

The local legislators are: Jorge Salgado Parra, Ricardo Moreno Arcos, Silvia Romero Suárez, Marco Antonio Cabada Arias, Efrén López Cortés, and  Manuel Saidi Pratts, who have left the PRI's state congress faction and declared themselves "independent." The federal deputy now kicked out of the PRI is Sofío Ramírez Hernández. 

In Guerrero, ahead of the Jan. 30 contest, I fear the worst of confrontations and political violence is yet to come. 

The face of the "New PRI"? Guerrero gubernatorial campaign turns ever uglier

Cars and trucks circulating, many without license plates, filled with youngsters paid to create havoc: In Guerrero, ahead of the gubernatorial election this month, this is sadly the face of the state PRI chapter and/or the campaign of PRI candidate Manuel Añorve Baños, which has seemingly paid thugs to tear down and rob election material - posters, banners, etc - belonging to the candidate of the left coalition, Ángel Aguirre Rivero. The PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition is also accusing the Añorve campaign of exceeding campaign spending limits, including contracting helicopters, and of having a massive media presence.

Quite likely, current governor Zeferino Torreblanca, while elected on a PRD platform, is doing all he can, legally and not, to back Añorve, given Torreblanca's highly public and bitter break with the PRD when the party refused to allow him to appoint the party's candidate to succeed him.

Things are heating up in Guerrero ahead of the Jan. 30 elections - the first ones in 2011. While opinions polls are well guarded, Añorve  and Aguirre appear to be quite tied, with Aguirre slightly ahead.

Guerrero gubernatorial election: Also about Ebrard vs. Peña Nieto.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard continues his active campaigning for the left´s coalition candidate in Guerrero, Ángel Aguirre River, who in campaign appearances with Ebrard promises to implement the same social programs Ebrard, and before him Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has carried out with much success in Mexico City. Amidst worrying reports that the electoral campaign is getting ever more tense and that violence has broken out between supporters of Aguirre and of PRI´s candidate Manuel Añorve Baños, Ebrard directly accused PRI of trying to buy the vote in old fashion with handouts of cement and building materials.

Governor of Mexico State, Enrique Peña Nieto, will also appear soon in state capital Chilpancingo,  Añorve Baños announced. The state election in Guerrero, while also highly significant of itself, will thus clearly be a prelude to 2012: Aguirre vs. Añorve also means Ebrard vs. Peña Nieto.

Guerrero: Ruth Zavaleta joins the gubernatorial campaign of PRI's Manuel Añorve Baños

In some ways it´s quite a shocker, in others not: Ruth Zavaleta, former federal deputy of the PRD, has now started appearing in campaign events for Manuel Añorve Baños in Guerrero and declared she supports his candidacy for governor. Notably, Zavaleta was the former president of the Chamber of Deputies 2007-2008, and a federal deputy for the 2006-2009 period. While she officially resigned from the PRD in 2009, it is nonetheless quite a surprise to see that Zavaleta is backing PRI, the nemesis of her old party.

Yet Zavaleta is from Guerrero, and remains close to Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected as the PRD's candidate in 2005 yet frequently clashed with the party, and who in recent months have launched vicious attacks on the PRD when he failed to impose his favored candidate to succeed him. She has, in essence, simply followed his path.

The case of Zavaleta is yet another sad example of the excessive opportunism within Mexican parties, of which the PRD is hardly exempt: The past months have seen the resignation of Senator Minerva Hernández Ramos from the party to join PAN, and in Baja California Sur, Marcos Covarrubias was long a front runner for the gubernatorial nomination, yet when he failed to achieve it he as well joined PAN.

Yet Zavaleta was no opportunistic newcomer to the PRD: She was one of the original party founders of the PRD, and served as borough/delegation chief in Mexico City in Venustiano Carranza before she became a federal deputy. This in contrast to e.g. Zeferino Torreblanca, who never joined the party in the first place, and whose policies as governor resembled little of the PRD's agenda. That Zavaleta would now join the candidacy of a man who is about as far removed from a leftist agenda as possible, Manuel Añorve Baños, suggests that whatever political convictions she might once have harbored, they were easily discarded on the altar of expediency and opportunism.

Manuel Añorve Baños offical PRI candidate, with Rubén Figueroa Alcocer in the audience

Manuel Añorve Baños, mayor of Acapulco, was designated a "unity candidate" by the PRI's Political Council in Guerrero State for next year's gubernatorial elections.

With no apparent sense of irony, Añorve claimed "I represent the future," with former Rubén Figueroa Alcocer present in the audience. Figueroa, to recall, was kicked out by the state legislature following the infamous Aguas Blancas massacre on June 28, 1995, where 17 campesions were executed in cold blood by police agents, and which Figueroa for the longest denied had ever occurred, until video images of the murders surfaced.

To his credit, Añorve did call for dialogue with the many armed guerrilla-like groups that still exist in Guerrero.  He will now face off against his cousin Ángel Aguirre Rivero as his main opponent.