Dangers of a new "cochinero": Electing the PRD et al's presidential candidate.

PRD declared it will decide shortly on how to elect the party's presidential standard bearer: Either as an open election through the urns - and not just PRD members, that is - or, through an opinion poll.
Both methods bring great dangers. Within the PRD, every single election for its presidential candidate carried out by mass party base vote has been an unmitigated disaster, and if this process is not carefully monitored, the party's election of its presidential candidate has a very high potential to become a disaster as well, in the process greatly diminishing the party/coalition's chances of winning in 2012.

Yet there is also a major problems with polls in Mexico: They are not only notoriously reliable, but also seen as highly politicized. The July 4 elections, for instance, showed an enormous disparity between what the polls said and what the outcome was, and in most cases this had to do with the PRI, which did far worse than the polls anticipated. This led of course to claims that the pollsters had been bought and paid for by the PRI to "fix" the polls in order to portray their candidates as all-but-invincible.

I recently had an interview round with several of the current IFE councilors, and most agreed that this was indeed a very serious issue that needed to be addressed ahead of 2012, through a new electoral reform or otherwise.

As for the PRD/PT/Convergencia, I still hope they will do it through a poll - an evil, yet still a lesser one. 

Peña Nieto: No to legalization. Church: PAN is inept.

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, in response to a rather tepid acceptance by President Felipe Calderón that legalization of drugs is indeed an option in Mexico, immediately declared himself against any such talk, but rather that "one needs to work much more on prevention." Prevention is clearly a key component of a greater scheme to fight drugs and, of course, the gangs themselves, but a blanket rejection of any discussion of legalization again places Peña Nieto on the right, aligned with the church's position on this.

The Church, incidentally, through Bishop Abelardo Alvarado, " of the arch-conservative Archdiocese of Mexico, declared that "panistas do not know how to govern."
Given the Catholic church's animosity toward the PRD - the church, in blatant breaches of the Constitution, has in many cases clearly asked its followers not to vote for the party - one might ask, what party is left to vote for that the church has not condemned, but rather cozied up to in recent years? Ironies of ironies, the party of Calles.

AMLO: No more talk of my candidacy.

As anticipated, AMLO´s declaration two years ahead of 2012 that he would see the presidency resulted in complaints that he was breaching electoral law, which after the 2007 electoral reform only allows for three months of "pre-campaigning." AMLO dismissed the complaint in a quasi-legalistic and fallacious manner, arguing it only applies to candidates of parties. Hence, since AMLO is not yet a candidate of a particular party, he argues he has every right in the world to campaign two years ahead.
Again, even if this were the case, legally speaking - and I am quite certain it is not -  it also shows an utter disrespect for the spirit of the law. Regardless, the criticism must have had some impact, as he recently declared on tour in Zacatecas (to back up his candidacy, to be sure, but disguised as "book promotion) that he would "not talk any more of his candidacy¨.".I am not holding my breath.

Peña Nieto and the church

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto recently declared that his government and the (catholic) church has “common objectives.” That is putting it mildly. For years Peña Nieto has shamelessly courted the support of the religious right, jumping on its most regressive of social positions. I say shamelessly not principally due to the utter incongruence with the PRI’s historic secularism and reticence toward mixing religion and politics (though much of this did, to be sure, come to an end during the government of Carlos Salinas), but his breaching of electoral law to announce his love for the church. The most infamous that comes to mind is Peña Nieto's trip to the Vatican, duly covered by Televisa, where he "presented" to the pope his new wife-to-be, Angélica Rivera, and where functionaries of Mexico State lined up to get the pope´s blessing.  

Expect more expressions of love from Peña Nieto's faction of PRI to the church in the months to come. 

(His first wife died under what still appear to be rather unclear circumstances. Without exaggerating this point, it is worth having a look at this video clip, where he can´t seem to recall her exact cause of death).

AMLO and Cárdenas - reconciliation after all of these years?

AMLO, on tour in Michocán to promote his book and, inevitably, his 2012 candidacy, notably praised the Cárdenas clan, from Lázaro to Cuauhtémoc to Lazaro junior. This is interesting given the acrimonious relations between AMLO and CC the past decade, when AMLO as Mexico City mayor eclipsed CC as the most important figure within the PRD. Things got particularly bad, to recall, during the 2006 elections, when CC did not campaign for AMLO (he had for the longest contested his nomination as PRD´s presidential candidate, which would have been his fourth try), and refused to even saythat he voted for him. Moreover, CC as quickly recognized the victory of Felipe Calderón in 2006. This left much bitterness within the AMLO camp. I remember interviewing 6-7 of AMLO´s "secretaries" of his "legitimate government," and "traitor" was a common characterization. 


Yet the AMLO-CC spat was more a clash of egos rather than any programmatic differences; AMLO, for one, was recruited by CC in the fall of 1988- many andresmanuelistas tend to forget that AMLO was not with CC in the fateful 1988 election, remaining loyal to PRI until CC recruited him to finally bail PRI and join the Frente Democrático Nacional for the Tabasco state elections - and their trajectories mirror each other highly. CC, to recall, was highly anti-institutional, refused to declare himself ideologically in terms of left and right, was highly skeptical of institutional reform, such as the crucial 1995-6 electoral reforms - yet while he eventually moderated, AMLO kept up this discourse until this day. 


But back to the point of this news article: Given that both AMLO and CC heavily criticized the highly successful PAN-PRD state alliances, they appear to recall their common ground, particularly as it may include a PRD presidency for CC´s son Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, former governor of Michoacán, or other positions. Both, to be sure,  are highly critical of the leadership of Jesús Ortega of PRD.
It will be very interesting to see where Michocán Governor Leonel Godoy will stand. He is much closer to the Ortega camp ideologically and in terms of political trajectory, but owes much to both AMLO and CC. Much remains to be decided. 

Some more good news from Guanajuato: Investigation of ultra-activist judge

I don't hold too much faith in the judicial system of Guanajuato, a state that is governed my the falangist far right of the PAN, yet the announcement that there will now be a legal investigation of Carlos Alberto Llamas Morales, the judge who notoriously sentenced a woman who had a miscarriage to 27 years in prison,  must be regarded good news. May it be the end of the beginning of the end of the war against women in Guanajuato. 

(Not so) Friendly fire not always on the left: Espino compares Cálderon to... Chávez!

Manuel Espino, head of Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América (ODCA), or the "Christian Democratic International," and longstanding critic of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, ratched up the rhetoric a notch  yesterday by arguing Calderón could be compared to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in his "authoritarianism." The reason is Calderón's alleged interference in the process of electing Espino´s successor of this loose center-right organization of christian democratic parties.


Espino, one should note, is hardly a centrist, but a rather ardent rightwinger close to the extremist secret Catholic society El Yunque, and was one of the main responsible for the dirty campaign against AMLO in 2006. Yet ever since he was forced out as PAN party chief in 2008, he has been a bitter opponent of Calderón, publishing three books since 2008 bashing Calderón and his policies.

He certainly has a point regarding his ouster as party president: While Espino was duly elected president of PAN by its National Council (which is exactly the mechanism PRD should resort to, by the way), while Calderón resorted to a mechanism long practiced by PRI, and criticized by Calderón when he in turn was party president, namely where the president of he nation would simply select the party president by a dedazo, rather than through a vote in the party organs. Once president, Calderón threw this old conviction out the window and duly selected both Germán Martínez and César Nava as subsequent PAN presidents. Hence much of the bitterness toward Calderón, as well as programmatic differences: In my eyes Calderón is rather a centrist and far from as socially conservative as Espino. 


"Friendly fire" in Mexican politics thus does not always happen on the left.