Manlio Fabio Beltrones, new president of the Mexican Senate

Manlio Fabio Beltrones was elected new president of the Mexican senate, on his birthday no less. Expect him to use this position at every occasion to promote his bid to become the PRI's candidate for president in 2012. His first occasion to do so will be in his "reply" to President Felipe Calderón's "Informe," equivalent to the State of the Union, which will be delivered to the Senate. Beltrones pointedly refused to attend the recent "Security Dialogue" convoked by Calderón.


(Ricardo Monreal, who was a PRD senator until he left it for the PT in December 2008, put up a clownish show to protest the PT's exclusion from the Senate directorate). 


(On Sunday, José González Morfín was elected new PAN group leader, replacing Gustavo Madero who will compete for the PAN's national presidency. González Morfín was elected by unanimity.)


While it was the PRI's turn to preside over the Senate, its usurping of the presidency of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, is a whole other matter. Jesús Ortega, president of PRD whose turn had come to preside over the chamber's directorate, yesterday met with members of the Supreme Court, as the party is analyzing taking legal action to obtain what is their rightful turn. 


One question remains: Will Alejandro Encinas be fully behind the PRD's quest to head the directorate, or has AMLO already instructed him to block Jesús Zambrano, of the opposing Nueva Izquierda faction, from assuming this powerful position? The PRD's internal war, far from over, is merely heating up ahead of the battle over the 2012 candidacy nomination, and AMLO has on numerous occasions demonstrated he will torpedo his old party if it favors his own agenda. 

Alejandra Barrales declares her candidacy for Mexico City... of sorts.

Alejandra Barrales, the flight attendant-cum-leader of the legislative assembly in the federal district (ALDF), announced during her report on the activities of the ALDF that she had "an aspiration, an aspiration that many of those here share with me; you know very well, because you know me, that I will work incessantly to achieve this aspiration." While likely the entire crowd took the message to be her declaration for candidacy, she then meekly added, "my aspiration is that in this city we can guarantee the right of every citizen to happiness." If Barrales didn't have the guts to take it all out - the field for candidates is getting quite crowded already - consider it at the very least a feeler, from a very likely candidate who is moreover one of AMLO's favorites for the position as chief of Mexico City. 


Barrales, a member of the more radical Izquierda Social faction of the PRD,  has held a range of public positions, from secretary general of the union of airline attendants (ASSA) to federal deputy to secretary of tourism in Ebrard's government to president of the PRD in Mexico City to now head of the ALDF. She has hardly excelled in any of these positions. 

El Universal editorial denounces Interior Minister Blake Mora's cowardice

An El Universal editorial rightly takes on José Francisco Blake Mora's failure to simply do his job, which as ministry of the interior includes protecting the constitution. El Universal has been at the forefront in the defense of the secular state following the recent outrageous attacks of the catholic church on key provisions of the Mexican constitution. Yet Blake has not uttered a single word of criticism in public against the church and in defense of the constitution, despite having the occasion as recently as yesterday, when he met with church representatives. The editorial concludes: 

"If the federal government wants to give more freedom to the religious sector, it will have to push for a change in the Constitution. It is in the meantime obliged to enforce existing regulations rather than to deal with the subject according to the whims or personal beliefs of its staff."

Luis Armando Reynoso, outgoing governor of Aguascalientes, kicked out of the PAN

Luis Armando Reynoso Femat was officially expelled from PAN following a vote on its National Executive Committee - by unaminity, no less. The case was rather clear cut: Reynosa Femat went out of his way to sabotage the PAN candidate for governor in the recent elections, Martín Orozco Sandoval, campaigning instead for the PRI's Carlos Lozano de la Torre, who came out on top. Reynoso Femat didn't even bother to show up at the hearing, and the expulsion only means he will not have to resign to rejoin the PRI, a party he left in 1995.

An occasion to be noted: A New York Times editorial that gets it all right

From The New York Times editorial on the gruesome massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas:

"The temptation may be to write this atrocity off as another ugly footnote in Mexico’s vicious drug war. But such things do not exist in isolation. Mexico’s drug cartels are nourished from outside, by American cash, heavy weapons and addiction; the northward pull of immigrants is fueled by our demand for low-wage labor....

We have delegated to drug lords the job of managing our immigrant supply, just as they manage our supply of narcotics. The results are clear."

PRI anger, part II: PRI will push for impeachment

Francisco Rojas, PRI group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, announced that PRI would push for an initiative that would introduce a reform allowing for the impeachment of the Mexican president:

"The federal government has not tired of showing us that it is capable of anything, rather than to allow our electoral rise, because the spectacle cynically put on by him and his party to harass and try to shown by him and his party, to harass and to try to bring down the PRI, can not and should not be an option that we accept passively."

The PAN, meanwhile, through party leader César Nava declared its full support for the PRD to head the directorate of the Chamber of Deputies the coming legislative period. PRI is reneging on an earlier agreement where the PRD would take over the rotating presidency, yet in an act of vengeance against the PRD is now seeking control of the directorate for itself.

And to this, which on its own can lead to a serious climate of political instability, ungovernability and unconstitutionality, PRI has now added threats of impeachment.

PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State speeds ahead: PRI admits it fears it

Recently, Carlos Hank Rhon, son of the notoriously corrupt Carlos "a politician who is poor is a poor politician" Hank González, in an unusual display of honesty bluntly admitted that PRI fears a PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico state.  Hank also reiterated that the PRI has not yet settled on a candidate to replace Enrique Peña Nieta as governor of the state, but active candidates remain the federal deputies Luis Videgaray and Humberto Benítez Treviño, PRI group leader in the local congress Ernesto Nemer, former governor  César Camacho, and finally, Alfredo del Mazo Maza, who is mayor of the municipality of Huixquilucan, adjacent to the Federal District. The latter is usually regarded as Peña Nieto's anointed one, and as such the most likely PRI candidate.


Key PAN and PRD senators such as Santiago Creel Miranda (likely PAN presidential candidate), Héctor Miguel Bautista López (leader of the important ADN faction of the PRD), Ulises Ramírez Núñez (PAN) and Adriana González Carrillo (PAN) reiterated their willingness to strike yet another alliance against the PRI. 


Within the PRD, Alejandro Encinas, unconditional ally of AMLO yet opposed to the alliances, has also expressed a desire to contend, as has former failed gubernatorial candidate Yeidckol Polevnsky. Yet Senator Héctor Bautista, were he to lead a PRD-PAN coalition, looks a particularly strong candidate with a wider appeal than Encinas and Polevnsky. Bautista is very popular with PRD cadres - like Encinas, but unlike Polevnsky - and his ADN ally Luis Sánchez Jiménez is currently the head of the PRD in Mexico State. 
Expect things to heat up very soon: Elections will be held less than a year from now, on July 3 2011.