How Calderón destroyed PAN

A very recommended read from sinembargo.mx and Alejandro Páez Varela on the stunning collapse of PAN on Calderón's watch, playfully entitled "It's Calderón, stupid."

He reminds us what he did:

Fue Felipe Calderón el que hizo funcionarios de primer nivel del PAN a dos incondicionales que son una bofetada para la mayoría de los ciudadanos: Juan Molinar Horcasitas y Cecilia Romero...
Fue Felipe Calderón el que dio larga vida a Elba Esther Gordillo (y a otros líderes sindicales corruptos) y le permitió transitar sin dificultad hasta un siguiente sexenio, en el que ha comprado, otra vez, impunida...
Fue Felipe Calderón el que dio larga vida a Elba Esther Gordillo (y a otros líderes sindicales corruptos) y le permitió transitar sin dificultad hasta un siguiente sexenio, en el que ha comprado, otra vez, impunida...
Fue Felipe Calderón el que convirtió en la voz del PAN a un golpeador repugnante como Javier Lozano; el que entregó a sus amigos de pachanga la imagen del país y del mismo partido; fue Calderón el que ordenó expulsar a las voces disidentes (en un partido fundado por el pensamiento disidente) y fue Calderón el que lo puso, en 2012, en manos de ineptos pero muy compadres.

In short, Calderón, in complete control of PAN with his wife Margarita Zavala since 2006, bear the brunt of blame for PAN's destruction. Don't expect Calderón to express even the slightest hint of self-criticism: He has not once did this since July 2, 2006 - why start now?

Source:
Alejandro Páez Varela: Es Calderón, estúpidos. Sinembargo.mx, July 9, 2012.

Gabriel Quadri, zero credibility

Gabriel Quadri, the presidential candidate for Elba Esther Gordillo's teacher party PANAL, is man who have completely exhausted whatever credibility he once held as a political journalist/environmentalist/activist etc:

While he earlier heaped praise upon the notorious Gordillo as an "admirable woman" and referred to her authoritarian union, led with iron hand by its "president-for-life" Gordillo since 1989, he now managed to claim that Gordillo has nothing to do with PANAL.

As anyone with a modicum of political knowledge would know - and Quadri certainly fits here - PANAL is a party created by and at the complete disposal of Gordillo, for sale for the highest bidder during both state and federal elections since its 2005 creation. It claims a "liberal" ideology, but is utterly devoid of any ideology or programmatic orientation.

(most recently a PANAL deputy, Héctor Alonso Granado, spewed anti-gay slurs in the state of Puebla, for which he was denounced to the state's human rights commission - so much for social liberalism)

Yet by openly proclaiming his adherence to these open "untruths," Quadri's credibility is not just undermined; it is really already, before the official election process has even started, gone out the door.

Political drama: Break PRI-Gordillo

Front page in all main Mexican newspapers: PRI president Pedro Joaquín Coldwell announced the PRI's electoral alliance with PANAL is over.

This is very dramatic political news: It has been known for a while that grassroots discontent in PRI surged given the extremely generous terms in favor of PANAL, the party controlled by teacher union head Elba Esther Gordillo, and the PVEM, the misnamed "Green party." As for the latter, there was much criticism of the blatant nepotism from Gordillo, who wanted both her daughter and son-in-law as candidates for the senate- as well as a disproportionate number of other senate and legislative seats.

Yet crucially, as far as I can see, this means that any alliance for a common candidate for presidential election - that Gordillo would back Peña Nieto - is also over.

Coldwell, who confirmed the alliance with the PVEM (for now?), said of Gordillo and PANAL: "It is not a rupture, it is an amicable separation." That is simply not true: This is a huge political rupture.

Just a few days ago, we also learned that PRI Chiapas Senator María Elena Orantes López renounced from the PRI, after weeks of wavering, wreaking havoc on the local as well as the national party organization.

I can't wait to learn more about the background for this. Did Gordillo get a better offer from PAN? Did she push it simply too far, and PRI realized her support just cost it too much?

But the good news is, from my point of view: The 2012 race just got a lot more competitive. A lot.

PRI will run in coalition with the two most discredited parties in Mexico

Admittedly there are a few to choose from - Mexico has an unusally wide array of highly opportunistic minor parties - yet in terms of two lacking near any semblance of a programmatic identity and real purpose beyond serving as franchises, as tools for their leaders, few beat the Partido Nueva Alianza (PANAL) of teacher union boss Elba Esther Gordillo, and, unchallenged at the top, the  Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM), the only rightwing Green Party in the world, which is not green, and not a real party.

Regardless: PRI's Political Commission just announced it will go in coalition with these two miscreants for the 2012 election in at least 126 districts, and for 10 senatorships. The PVEM's "Niño Verde," Jorge Emilio González Martínez, son of party founder Jorge González Torres, wants to be senator, and will likely get the candidacy.

Joaquín López-Dóriga has a very interesting column on the price PANAL wanted to extract from PRI - 30 federal deputies and 5 senators, reportedly. That is a very high price to pay for Gordillo's support.

Mexico's party leaders - gossip time!

El Universal had recently a very informal survey, one might say, of the heads of Mexico's political parties. For political junkies (whatever that expression really means), it is quite amusing reading. And not quite gossip either - as the information is actually true. Sadly.

We learn that:
- Jorge Kahwagi Macari, until recently PANAL leader, has a 10-million dollar yacht, and lives in a 5,500-meter square house. A true representative of the teachers that comprise the PANAL party, in other words.

- Jorge Emilio González Martínez, the "niño verde,"nominally head of the PVEM, the Mexican Green Party, which is anything but, just took his girlfriend who is half his age (she must be-according to the article, she just finished the preperatoria(!) to Disneyland. And that despite being a party leader, he did not attend or head any political event in 2010. Rather, he goes daily to play tennis in the wealthy Bosque de las Lomas area where he also lives, or to the Sport City in Santa Fe. And he proudly wears the most expensive designer clothes out there, including Brioni Suits. What a genuine representative of the post-materialist Green agenda!-

- Luis Walton Aburto, leader of the nominally left party Convergencia, which all of a sudden threw its lot with AMLO to become a "radical" party, is ultra rich, from owning gas stations and private schools. He also proudly tells us that he gains tons of money. What a great representative of los de abajo, of the downtrodden and poor!

There are those who come significantly better off. Humberto Moreira at least has a good sense of humor; PAN's Gustavo Madero is quite the wine connoisseur, PT's Alberto Anaya is as unpretentious as one can get,  with crooked glasses and worn shoes, and PRD's Jesús Zambrano still shops at the corner store in Culhuacán, a very modest zone where he still lives, and likes to drink and play guitar with Carlos Navarrete and Guadalupe Acosta.

What more info does one need? To the polls!

Gordillo's PANAL party under investigation by IFE

Mexico's federal electoral institute is carrying an investigation of Partido Nueva Alianza (PANAL), the teachers union-based party controlled completely by  Elba Esther Gordillo, due to "unusual movements" in its bank account. 

PANAL's new president Luis Castro Obregón seems to fit the party like hand in glove.  He denied that the audit has anything to do with recent hurling of accusations of corruption between Gordillo and Miguel Angel Yunes, though refused to offer any more comments on the matter. 

Then, asked if he knew the name of Ricardo Viso Veligson, a man who has endorsed 18 cheques to the party for over 7 million pesos,  he simply refused to confirm or deny anything.

At least the former party president Jorge Kahwagi Macari - he of the 5,500-square meter house, a mini-horse collection,  and a 10-million dollar yacht  - was somewhat entertaining in his eccentricity, by way of comparison. 

Elba Esther Gordillo's effect on 2006 a myth?

A very interesting article in today's El Universal, by CIDE researcher and political scientist José Antonio Crespo.

In a nutshell: While Elba Esther Gordillo certainly made a pact with Calderón in 2006, in an unseemly votes-for-political positions, the value of her votes are vastly exaggerated.

Why? While it is well known that her party PANAL received far more votes for its list of national deputies than for its presidential candidate - herein was the very bargain, where the SNTE-organized teachers and their families would vote for Calderón for president and their own party for lawmakers - yet a a forthcoming study by Javier Aparacio, one of CIDE's very sharpest minds, now reveals that of the SNTE/PANAL teachers, only 22 percent actually followed the order to so, while 27 percent voted for AMLO.

What does this mean? That  Calderón paid a very heavy price for very little, and that Gordillo's bargaining power with regards to her PANAL party may be a castle made of sand: She does not deliver.

Party leaders, take note.

Ebrard: No alliance with Gordillo or her PANAL party for 2012

Marcelo Ebrard maintained there will be no alliance with Elba Esther Gordillo and her PANAL party for 2012.

Recall that just a couple of days ago, Jorge Castañeda claimed, quite improbably, that Ebrard was Gordillo's first choice for 2012.

PRI deputies clamors for alliance with Gordillo's PANAL for 2012

The PRI's legislative bench in the Chamber of Deputies defended going in an alliance with PANAL, the personal party of  Elba Esther Gordillo of the SNTE teachers union, and claimed it was "belittling" the party to merely regard it as an appendage of Gordillo - which everyone knows, of course, that it is.

And even better: PRI federal deputy  David Penchyna argued that PANAL has "an ideology that is congruent with the PRI."

Indeed, as both have none, beyond their desire for power and the spoils thereof.

Gordillo scandal, part two: "I'll do if you do it"

What a week. There are many who consider Elba Esther Gordillo's stronghold on Mexico's public education sector as highly detrimental to the country's future. I wholeheartedly agree, but also want to point add that similarly, her personal party Nueva Alianza or (PANAL), is equally detrimental to Mexican democracy: It is a purely personalistic and opportunistic party that Gordillo sells -literally - to the highest bidder. It is staffed with "teachers" who receive a public salary on the tax payers' expense, yet who dedicate themselves to party work on PANAL's behalf. It is truly a perverse operation.

These past days have provided a wealth, a trove, of information on the inner dealings of PANAL and Gordillo. To recall: A couple of days ago, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, former director of the ISSSTE social security institute for state workers, and one of the people Gordillo was allowed to appoint as a pay-off for her support of the PAN in 2006, dropped an apparent bombshell when he claimed that Gordillo demanded 20 million pesos per month from him for PANAL, arguing that "ISSSTE is mine!" (more details here).

Gordillo responded that the accusations are "frivolous and slanderous."

These accusations should be investigated by the PGR attorney general's office, as several federal deputies have demanded. It should come as absolutely no surprise if they are true.

Yet quite a few factors do not exactly count in Yunes' - a failed candidate for Veracruz governor in 2010 - favor.

First, he only dropped the news after Gordillo had hinted at "malos manejos" or mismanagement at ISSSTE last week, suggesting that 2 billion pesos had disappeared from the institute. It hardly speaks to his credit that he did not only wait for Gordillo to strike first, but also waited four years for this alleged corruption to be known.

Second, what evidence exists? As PAN Senator José González Morfín has correctly demanded: Show us what you got.

Third, Gordillo has demanded an investigation of Yunes' period at ISSSTE. What has been Yunes' response? That he'll agree to an independent audit if at the same time there will be an investigation of Gordillo, knowing full well that such an investigation will likely never take place: She is simply too powerful now, more than two decades Carlos Salinas made her new SNTE head.

I truly hope an investigation will be launched of both Gordillo and Yunes, a former príista and ultra-loyal Gordillista-turned-panista, yet I am hardly hopeful, as everyone wants her PANAL party to back them in 2012, Calderón included.

PRD demands that PANAL loses its party registry it these accusations are true. A very fair demand, and I think also Mexican democracy would be far better off without PANAL.

Much more will come out of this scandal, that's the only thing I am pretty confident about.

Finally, what does Enrique Peña Nieto think about this issue? He prefers not to enter in these "word games" he says. That is peñanieto-speak for, "wait, let me talk with my handlers first"

PANAL's leadership succession, worthy of North Korea - or Cuba

Absolutely pathetic: Elba Esther Gordillo installs her former personal secretary Luis Castro Obregón as new head of PANAL, and makes her daughter Mónica Arriola Gordillo the party's new secretary general.

And for good measure: Party delegates could vote for any new leadership option they liked, as long as it was the Obregón-Arriola list, as it was the only option available.

The Partido Nueva Alianza has today, according to its outgoing leader Jorge Kahwagi Macari, 64 local deputies, 407 councilors and 34 mayors.

Not bad for a party founded by and for Gordillo's teacher union.

PRI is anti-alliance - except from their own, signed yesterday

The PRI, the Green Party (PVEM), and Nueva Alianza (PANAL) formalized their electoral alliance - yes, alliance - ahead of the July 3 gubernatorial election in Mexico State. 


Does it get more hypocritical than this? This is the same PRI, to recall, that under Enrique Peña Nieto has done everything in its power - altering electoral law, government propaganda, likening it to organized crime - to block a PRD-PAN alliance, tagging said alliance as "unnatural" and the like. 


In PRI-PVEM-PANAL's defense, the three parties do indeed have quite a bit in common: They are highly opportunistic vehicles, vacuous of any serious programmatic convictions, where trying to grasp a hold of their ideology is akin to reaching into a bowl of jelly. 


Jesús Zambrano, new PRD leader, pointedly asked if PRI, which has attacked the "ideological incongruence" of a PRD-PAN alliance, also agrees with the Green Party's main campaign issue of reinstating the death penalty in Mexico, or with the absolute chiefdom of Elba Esther Gordillo over PANAL and the SNTE teacher union. 

Picture from Milenio. Pure ideological and programmatic congruence, mind you. 

The Gordillo joke was real: "Mama, vote for Nueva Alianza"

See the image for yourself:

Yes, more news on how PANAL is subverting democracy in Mexico State: The party of Elba Esther Gordillo and her SNTE union has engaged in the same nefarious behavior there as in Baja California Sur, handing out election material to children and school supplies embossed with the PANAL logo, including a note that reads, and I am not kidding this time, "Mama, get [a] 10 [points]. this July 5, vote for PANAL"

It gets better: SNTE has even made the children fold and prepare election material! They have also brought home coupons asking their parents to buy goods and food products benefiting PANAL.

SNTE and PANAL have gone too far: The party may and should lose its registry. As for the SNTE union: When will anyone dare to take on these hacks?

"Daddy, if you love me vote for Elba Esther." More fallout from SNTE/PANAL scandal as dissidents speak out

Dissidents from the SNTE teacher union opposed to the dictatorial rule of Elba Esther Gordillo appear to increasingly speak out against the outrageous practices of Gordillo's troops. In one case, in Mexico State, teacher Pedro Ramírez Vázquez of the dissident (anti-Gordillo) Section 36 of SNTE said that in some schools, teachers have asked the young pupils to bring them a copy of their parents voting card (!)

What is next? Instructing the kids to tell their parents, "Daddy, if you really love me, can you please vote for PANAL?"

Ever dirtier in Guerrero: Trailer full with hand-outs intercepted from Mexico State

In Guerrero, the left coalition Guerrero Nos Une, behind the candidacy of Ángel Aguirre Rivero, revealed that they had intercepted a full semi trailer in Acapulco loaded with food hand outs, with markings alluding to the Mexico State DIF, and also including electoral material from Elba Esther Gordillo's Panal party.

Note that the PRD recently denounced several governors, including Enrique Peña Nieto, for interfering in the election with trinkets and handouts. Here is what appears to be hard evidence for the accusations.

(From Milenio)

Elba Ester Gordillo's SNTE-PANAL stoops to new low: Get them while they're young

It really is quite a scandal, and should have some serious repercussions: The party PANAL, an electoral outfit based in the SNTE teacher's union that came into being when Gordillo was kicked out of the PRI and brought her PRI-affiliated teacher groups with her, has seemingly engaged in a blatant breach of electoral law in Baja California Sur - as well as crossing any remaining moral boundary - by handing out, through its SNTE cadres, school material for children at the primary level that included logos of PANAL and in Kim Il-Sung-style exalted Gordillo's party - all with the benediction of teachers and the administration of the schools.

Baja Calfornia Sur is having elections in a few weeks time, and what better way to get to voters than to hand out election material to children - most likely financed by taxpayers - so that they can bring it home to mom and dad and tell them how great PANAL is? Well, there is another one: Include a little note that asks for their name, last name, street, house number, municipality, state, borough, area code, phone number, and email, or that of "one of their parents."

Even the most  cursory glance at PANAL's actions makes it obvious that it violates not only electoral law, but also Mexico's legal code.

Jesús Ortega, national president of the PRD, argued PANAL should lose its national registry as party.
Manuel Espino, former PAN leader, condemned the use of primary schools for electoral proselytizing; current PAN leader Gustavo Madero echoed Ortega's call for PANAL to lose its official registry.

Let's not forget as well that the party is violating any right of the children to privacy and protection of personal data, even potentially putting their lives and those of their parents in danger

President of the federal electoral institute (IFE), Leonardo Valdés, said IFE would seek to corraborate the information before deciding what to do. Let's hope they act fast: The actions of PANAL, and SNTE, must have consequences, if the law is to appear to have any weight and value at all.

Could one also be allowed to hope, just for a moment, that the increasing calls for leader-for-life of SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo to renounce her position might actually be heeded?

What does it take to get fired from the Chamber of Deputies? Jorge Kahwagi Macari

La Jornada reports on the very poor attendance rate of particularly PRI, PAN, and PANAL deputies in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. None beats Jorge Kahwagi Macari: The boxer-media celebrity-cum politician, who is also the nominal head of Elba Esther Gordillo's Partido Nueva Alianza (PANAL), a party based on her iron-fisted control of the SNTE teachers union, in the current congressional period has attended 1 - one - out of 26 session! At the single session he did attend, he merely registered in the electronic registry and then took off. All the while, Kahwagi has continued to draw his legislator's salary and the many perks that come with being a national deputy. To add, in the previous session, from February to March, he also only showed up to register electronically, and then skipped the 30(!) other sessions held.

With such behavior, is it any wonder that Mexico's national legislators are held in low esteem?

A candidate with no shame: Leonel Cota registers as PANAL candidate

The former president of PRD and before that governor of Baja California Sur, Leonel Cota, must surely be one of the most opportunistic and desperate political candidates in that state's history. After his candidacy for the sweet spot as municipal president of the tourism (and high income) paradise Los Cabos, Cota huffed and puffed and loudly abandoned the PRD. (Quick note: He was even before that, until 1998 a prominent PRI member, until he lost the election to be its gubernatorial candidate).

Then, Cota sought the nomination of the PRI-allied Green Party (PVEM) - an archenemy of the PRD, to be sure, and even AMLO found this postulation regrettable. Cota then moved on to seek the nomination of Convergencia, which in BCS rejected a common candidate with PRD and PT. Yet apparently these negotiations went awry. And what did Cota do?

He now just registered as a candidate of PANAL! That's right, the teacher union-based PANAL, another arch-enemy of the PRD and particularly Andrés Manuel López Obrador. PANAL, headed by the notorious "Jimmy Hoffa in a skirt" Elba Esther Gordillo, whose mobilization of teachers on behalf of Calderón in 2006 was a big contributing factor to PAN's victory.

So let's see: Leonel Cota, first of PRI, then PRD, then PVEM, then Convergencia, then PANAL.
His recent moves has cemented his legacy as one of the greatest sinvergüenzas to have ever passed by the PRD.