Jorge Emilio "Niño Verde" González and the dead Bulgarian in Cancún

Jorge Emilio González Martínez, until recently president of the Mexican "Green" party PVEM (after succeeding his father in this sultanistic enterprise which is not a Green party as we know them elsewhere), is an utterly failed "politician" who have absolutely no interest in politics, ideology, or programs, as has been amply demonstrated by his, to put it mildly, undistinguished trajectory in public service.

His world is the world of holidays to Disneyland and New York City, sports clubs, extreme consumption, and partying. He is most recently in deep trouble for exactly the latter, after a party that was held in his huge luxury department in Cancún, where a young Bulgarian woman, Galina Chankova Chaneva, "fell from a window" this past April. As investigative reporter Lydia Cacho has confirmed, González tried to kill the story and denied it was even his apartment, yet Cacho states that he was indeed present, and called the governor of Quintana Roo to try to quiet the whole affair down.

Regardless: Now PRI, in "partial alliance" with the PVEM (which means that in some of the 300 single-member districts of Mexico, they will field common candidates, as well as for some Senate seats), has the guts to put forth Jorge Emilio González as its candidate for Senate for Quintana Roo, paired with ex governor Félix González Canto, reportedly under investigation for corruption.

Even Jesús Martínez, who was the first governor of the state in 1975 (it only became a state in 1974), has come out against the alliance, which he calls "shameful." Other members of PRI have also criticized the proposed candidacy, pointing out that González, once nicknamed the "Green Kid," a term now used ironically, is more famous for scandals and corruption than his legislative achievements.

One thing bears pointing out: If elected to the senate, both the Gonzálezes would have six years of immunity for prosecution.

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.

Free Ipads! Just give us your data, Mexican Green party says

This is truly repugnant. The Mexican "Green Party" is offering Ipads, Ipods, and refridgerators  - or, the chance of winning one of these items - in return for sending you their personal information - full name, address, etc.

Senator Arturo Escobar insisted that such practices does not need the permission of the Interior Ministry, as it is technically not a lottery, because no tickets are handed out.

He also denied that the PVEM has been handing out any flyer announcing this dubious practice, despite El Universal having revealed this in its investigation. Escobar is a man whose lack of sincerity, integrity and credibility rivals that of Sarah Palin, so I'll trust El Universal on this one.

There are few things I would like more to see happen in Mexican politics than the revocation of PVEM's party registry. May this be one more nail in its coffin.

Narco Soliz Soliz : Last year, a candidate for Green Party federal deputy!

This is quite amazing: Last year, Saúl Solís Solís / Saúl Soliz Soliz, who was just arrested as an important figure within the Caballeros Templarios drug trafficking organization, was a candidate to be... a federal deputy!

While Solís Solís lost the vote, he was the candidate of the PVEM Green party, and here is his campaign video.

Mexican Green Party president abruptly removed - media power?

Jorge Emilio González Martínez,  the "Green kid" who has been president of the Mexican Green Party, Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM), was abruptly removed as president and made into an "honorary councilor" following a vote at the party's national assembly.

This is purely theatrics: The only other president of the Green party was  González' father Jorge González Torres (1991-2001), and the party remains a pure financial family enterprise without any life or direction of its own. It is moreover the only right-wing "green" party in the world that even got kicked out of the "Green international."

Most probably not by coincident, the abrupt removal at the PVEM top follows an amazing investigation in the Mexican daily El Universal that details how the entire party leadership consists of random friends - from school, party friends, even his house cleaner - of the niño verde, who many may remember from the 2004 video scandal where he was on hidden camera offered a hefty bribe to allow some beach development to take place in an endangered area.

Must-read on Mexican Green Party, Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM)

This article, which ran in El Universal a few days ago, is an absolute must-read on the Mexican Green Party (PVEM). It completely strips it down for what it is: a party "franchise" at the service of highest bidder and a tool for the pharmaceutical industry, all coalescing around its party leader Jorge Emilio González Martíne,a 30-year old who inherited the party from his father, and all his friends - they even recruited the house cleaner to become a federal deputy, just for kicks.

This is truly the most preposterous party in Mexico's political landscape today.
Here's a pdf with the most important characters in this franchise.

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!

The Mexican Green Party: A family enterprise devoid of principles

Milenio on Sunday had an excellent article on the Mexican Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, PVEM), a party that even among other opportunistic parties truly stand out.

There are several small parties in Mexico - Convergencia, PANAL, PT, etc - that are characterized by very little if any ideology at all, but with a stunning level of opportunism and lack of principles, yet even compared with this ilk, the Green Party is truly something special: It is not only the world's only rightwing "environmentalist" party - one of its main issues has been to reintroduce the death penalty in Mexico - but also because the party has shown pretty much a complete disregard even for environmental issues: The European Federation of Green Parties as a result denied recognizing the PVEM as a green party.

One may also recall the "niño verde" scandal of 2004, when Jorge Emilio González Martínez, son of party founder Emilio González Torres - the party is essentially a family enterprise - was caught on tape apparently negotiating bribes where land grants would be given to beach developers in protected zones, in return for cash.

Nor does the party support any of the social liberal issues of other post-materialist green parties: In Mexico City, the party did not vote in favor of the law that legalized gay unions; in Guadalajara, moreover, its candidate for mayor in 2009, Gamaliel Ramírez, was fined by the state's electoral institute for anti-gay slurs against a gay opponent.

In any case: The Milenio article does a great job of detailing the lack of any political convictions of this party. Mexico's democracy would be far better off without this party.

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. 

Medical helicopter used for ski trips: Mexican Green Party (PVEM) in a nutshell

From the Mexican Green Party (PVEM) - the only rightwing environmentalist party in the world, mind you - we bring you Fernando Reina Iglesias, president of the Environment Commission in the Acapulco city council:

After being caught by the press, the councilor admitted that he had used a helicopter purchased by the Guerrero state's secretary of health to for medical transportation from Guerrero's poorest and most marginalized areas... to go skiing.

The helicopter has so far not been used for any sort of medical purposes whatsover, but for private trips by outgoing governor Zeferino Torreblanca, and for the barefoot-skiing-at-241 km/h-behind-a-helicopter- exercises of Reina Iglesias.

There are a few occasions where I simply just don't find the words, and this is one of them.

Mexico at its very worst: An incident in Cancún and the Mexican Green Party

So you have a case of a young man, Free Bronkhorst, a foreigner to add, who is being physically attacked by another man, Iván Ferrat Mancera, in Cancún, on Oct. 11 in 2009. Video cameras capture the incident, which seemingly show Ferrat Mancera and a companion as the the initial aggressors.

(Bronkhorst´s family and friends has uploaded the videos on youtube.com, and runs an advocacy Web site for Free)

Yet what happens? Ferrat Mancera, as it turns out, is the brother of Alain Ferrat Mancera, head of the local branch of the Mexican Green Party (PVEM) and - I am not making this up - the local city councilor for tourism! - and Bronkhurst, a Dutch national, is the one ending up in jail, where he will spend the next 14 months.

Bronkhurst, finally, was just released around Christmas, after paying a 163,000-peso bail, yet he might return to the dock should the Ferrat Mancera family appeal the verdict.

I certainly do not know the details in this case, but let´s pose the question: Does anyone think that the fact that Iván Ferrat Mancera is the brother of a powerful PVEM politician, had nothing to do with the fact that Bronkhurst, rather than Iván, ended up rotting in a Cancún jail?

Mexico's electoral tribunal confirms PVEM fine for calling Ortega a "delinquent"

The Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJ), Mexico's highest electoral court, confirmed the fine levied by the IFE a month back on the PVEM or Mexican Green party, after Senator Jorge Legorreta, PVEM leader in Mexico City, hurled accusations that the PRD and its leader Jesús Ortega were tied to organized crime.

While the right to free speech in a democracy must be paramount, this was far beyond a mere slip of the tongue; the PVEM had repeated these claims in communiques sent out to TV and radio stations, and promoted them on Web sites. Smears at times have consequences, and at times this may be a very good thing.

Former party president Leonel Cota renounces PRD to join the Green Party

 Leonel Cota's decision to abandon the party he as president to join the Mexican Green Party (PVEM), an extremely opportunistic electoral outfit devoid of any ideology or programmatic content, let alone care for the environment, is almost poetically logical. Cota, to recall, was a priísta until the late 1990s, but bailed PRI when the party failed to nominate him as its gubernatorial candidate for Baja California Sur. AMLO, then PRD president, encouraged Cota to join the PRD and run on its own label, which he successfully did. In 2005, with AMLO's presidential candidacy seemingly on tracks, he imposed Cota Montaño as PRD party president, a post he held until 2008. I have yet to meet any elite member of the PRD - either pro-AMLO or pro-Ortega, or anywhere in between, who had any good word to say about his leadership; he was universally regarded an absentee landlord, a caretaker president who took no initiatives on his own but followed any command of AMLO. He ended his presidency on a particular bad note, disgracing himself by directly interfering in the internal election to elect his successor, prematurely, and falsely, declaring Alejandro Encinas to be the winner. 


Now, Leonel Cota sought to be the PRD candidate for mayor of Los Cabos, but the PRD's Comisión Política Nacional, which represents all major party groups in somewhat of a council of elders, cancelled what was to have been a statewide poll to elect its candidates, due to disturbances and irregularities in the process. Cota, of course, huffed and puffed and accused the PRD of merely cancelling an internal election he was sure to win. He had earlier threatened to leave the party unless it made him its candidate, his decision to join the PVEM, a long-time enemy of the PRD and close ally of the PRI, is still more than bit shocking, yet given his opportunistic trajectory, ultimately congruent with his maxim: Your own interest first, always. 

The Green Party lies through its teeth; Octavio Germán Olivares: Peña Nieto's Law to Supreme Court

Octavio Germán Olivares, leader of PAN in Mexico State, announced that as soon as what has been dubbed by many actors as "Peña Nieto's Law" (the recent initiative to block alliances in Mexico State and to cut short the time allowed for campaigning, both explicitly favoring the current governor) is published in the Gaceta General de Gobierno and thus made state law, PAN will take the legislation to the Mexican Supreme Court. So will Convergencia - quite ironically, though, as its Mexico State delegation is in the hands of Peña Nieto and backed the law.

The rush with which the PRI machinery has been pushing and passing this law is simply stunning. The law was introduced into congress by PVEM deputy Adrián Fuente, rushed through commissions, and then voted on the floor, all within days. Now, mere hours after having been approved, the legislation was sent out to Mexico State's 125 municipalities, 63 of which need to approve it, which will not be a problem given that PRI-PVEM who ran together in alliance just last year, as well as with a few other allied minor parties, control 97 of them. Expect them to be rushed back well in time for Oct. 5, which is the absolute deadline for ratifying them.
Given the paralysis and delay of reforms that pervades in many legislatures, this level of "fast-track," as La Jornada deems it, is simply stunning.

Peña Nieto, for his part, though he has sheepishly denied having anything to do with the legislation, stated that he backs the reform as the electorate is "confused" by political alliances.

Yet the price for cynicism  - or, outright stupidity - goes to Arturo Escobar, PVEM's national secretary of electoral affairs, no less, who denies that the PVEM is running Peña Nieto's errand by falsely arguing that the Mexico State electoral law will now simply be harmonized with federal law. This is quite a riot: Federal electoral law just went the opposite direction: Following the 2007 Electoral Reform, parties can still run in a coalition but will now have to run on their own weight and own label rather than just on a common coalition label. For instance, while PRD negotiated in advance with PT and Convergencia on the numbers of legislators these parities would receive in return for running on a common platform with the PRD behind the 2006 candidacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, they will, on the federal level, now have to run on separate legislative lists, carrying their own weight. The PVEM is thus shockingly unfamiliar with Mexican electoral law, or, worse and more plausible still, simply lies through its teeth, hoping not to get caught.

And the kicker: Guess what party voted against the 2007 Federal Electoral Reform? Yes... The Green Party!

Peña Nieto's frontal assault on democracy: Legislation fast-tracks through Mexico State Congress

The initiative by the Green Party (PVEM) to impede the formation of electoral alliances in the upcoming gubernatorial elections in Mexico State, breezed through the local legislature in Mexico State after a cursory hearing with such a speed that designating it a "fast-track" hardly does it justice.  


What it does:
* While the legislation does pretend to block alliances, it will still allow common candidates, in the sense that PAN and PRD can still present a common one for 2011. However, should this legislation pass the full floor vote, they now basically have to register as one electoral party-coalition, rather than four separate parties  (PAN, PRD-PT-Convergencia) with separate lists for deputies and municipal presidents, as well as, crucially, separate funding. They will only have one common representative at the state electoral institute, which arranges the election and addresses irregularities, as well as only one representative at the ballot box. They will, in essence, operate in a "reverse gestalt," for lack of better word, where the total sum of the four parties will be considerably less than their component four parts. 


--> Note here that on the national level, the 2007 Electoral Reform went the opposite direction: While e.g. PT and Convergencia extracted a huge number of "safe seats" from the PRD as a price for going into a full coalition (all votes went to the coalition, not the individual parties) in 2006, this was changed at the federal level as the smaller parties now will have to carry their own weight - they have to present their own legislative/municipal lists rather than negotiating safe seats and "vote transfers" in advance. 


* In addition, however, the legislation also aims at greatly reducing the campaign time from 72 and 60 days for governor and deputies/municipal presidents, respectively, to 45 and 30. Clearly this is directly going to favor the party that already is receiving near total permanent coverage in the media, PRI and its candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. 


* Other measures to reduce party spending as well as methods to designate party representatives at the ballot stations, both intended to favor the sitting PRI. More here later. 


PRI and PVEM voted in commitee to bring the proposed legislation up to a floor vote, and was backed in this by none other than Convergencia, a quintessentially opportunist party that rivals the PVEM in frequency of turnings its cape to the wind (the same party is, to recall, on the national level an ardent backer of Andrés Manuel López Obrador), as well as PANAL and the Partido Social Demócrata (PSD) (the latter is now-defunct on the national level, and its representative in Mexico State is a PRI member in all but name). 


Peña Nieto, in his usual slick doublespeak, claimed he and the PRI were not against alliances at all:

 "What the PRI want is rather to promote a legal framework that permits transparent political competition, and that doesn't create confusion."

Beyond such niceties, this initative is far from aimed at ending confusion, but directly to seek to block a common PRD-PAN candidate in 2011, as well as other measures intended to directly favor the PRI candidate.

Now PRI/PVEM and its backers claims that such amalgams represent a more clear option than common candidacies, where parties run on their own separate labels and lists yet combine to put forth e.g. a common gubernatorial candidate.  The argument does not hold water even in a cursory reading.

PRI/PVEM are using the case of Guanajuato as a precedent; there, the local congress voted to ban common candidacies, which was appealed unsuccesfully to the Supreme Court. Yet the comparison is a spurious one, for a range of reasons, most importantly as it didn't apply to gubernatorial candidates, but municipal-level offices.

Luis Sánchez Jiménez, leader of the Mexico State branch of PRD and one of the most capable of PRD's cadres, deemed Peña Nieto "a danger to democracy and to the country." It is certainly a clear demonstration of the lengths of institutional engineering to which Peña Nieta is willing to go to reach the Mexican presidency.  PRD president Jesús Ortega gets the final word:

"Peña Nieto is on several fronts doing everything possible to prevent the alliance. He knows the risk of a democratic union that can beat him and the PRI in elections in the State of Mexico, and this will be a mortal blow, not only toward his pretensions to be President of the Republic, but a mortal blow to the person who appears today as the candidate of the oligarchy."

Peña Nieto´s institutional engineering to block PAN-PRD alliances reaps growing storm

Enrique Peña Nieto's decision to send the Green Party (PVEM) to seek to block a PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State, beyond yet again exposing the utter cynicism of the PVEM (which Jesús Ortega rightfully denounces as his "lackeys") is instructive for a range of reasons. Most obviously, it gives a hint at the lengths to which Peña Nieto is willing to go to get the presidency in 2012. To recall, just a few days ago he used the occasion of his fifth Informe to compare the alliances to organized crime. While Peña Nieto sheepishly backtracked and claimed he was not only "respectful" of the alliances buteven "favored" them, this recent legislative onslaught, condemned by national PAN and PRD leaders, may as Ciro Gómez Leyva commented in Milenio, be his "first error." I can think of quite a few more, though it certainly exposes Peña Nieto as a man willing to do anything to reach the presidency, and the "New PRI" he purports to represent as nothing different than the Old PRI. I hope this growing scandal will get the attention it deserves.

Beyond cynicism: Peña Nieto's attempt to legally block alliances is anti-democratic

In a stunning move of cynicism, PRI and PVEM together went a head and introduced an initiative to change the electoral code in Mexico State in order to prevent the PRD and PAN to have a common candidate in 2011, when Enrique Peña Nieto's successor will be elected. 

Adrián Fuentes, local Green party deputy, said the initiative aimed at preventing two or more parties from having a common candidate, if they didn't share "values, political platform, program of action, principles or ideology." PAN coordinator Óscar Sánchez Juárez rightly denounced the move as a "desparate act," that, if approved, would be a drastic step backward for democracy. Luis Sánchez Jiménez, president of the PRD mexiquense, said the move demonstrates that "both the PRI and the PVEM are scared of democracy." 

Even though PRI has a a majority of seven deputies out of 11 on the legislature's commission of legal affairs, which will first deal with the proposed legislation, it seems unlikely that this will pass a full vote in congress. Yet it serves to demonstrate, and quite starkly so, two major points, beyond PVEM's disgracing of itself (to recall, this party has ran as an alliance partner with both PAN and the PRI, and is currently a national ally of PRI)

1) The lengths to which Governor Enrique Peña Nieto is willing to go to block a PAN-PRD alliance, and 2) the new PRI looks just the same as the old PRI, and is more than willing to engage in opportunistic institutional engineering to have it its way. 

PAN. for its part, seems very bent on maintaining a PRD-PAN common candidacy; the question remains whether Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his movement-party advocates in the PRD will manage to block it this weekend. 

The Green Party on a mission: To block the Mexico State alliances

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, in yet another demonstration of the fear he has of a PAN-PRD coalition, is sending the Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, PVEM), on a dirty errand  The PVEM will introduce legislation in the Mexico State Congress to change the state's electoral code to make alliances illegal. This is the same Green Party, to recall, that jumped on board with Fox and the PAN in 2000, only to become PRI's ally ever since. One might think this new legislation would thus serve to block PVEM's possibility of running with the PRI, but no: The legislation would "block common candidacies of parties that are of distinct ideologies." That should take care of the PVEM: The party is utterly devoid of any programmatic or ideological backbone


While so hypocritical in nature that it nearly defies belief, it is simply an idiotic proposal: What authority would declare what parties are not compatible? A PRI-PVEM appointed commission? One could, alternatively, leave it to the voters. It's called democracy.