AMLO threatens to leave the PRD if PAN-PRD alliances continue

On tour in Chiapas to promote his book and, more importantly, his 2012 presidential candidacy, AMLO came out very hard  against the now-famous PAN-PRD state alliances, notably threatening to leave the party should the PAN-PRD alliances continue: 

"From now on I am warning you that we are going to draw a very clear line because it would be an act of treason. We have nothing to do with PAN, which stole the presidency of the republic form us in 2006...This alliance is wrong; I am against it. I don't accept that the PRD unites with the PAN; it is going to be a great betrayal if the PRD leaders want to unite with the panistas toward the 212 presidential elections."

The declarations, using his strongest language so far against the party of which he is still nominally a member, must be seen in context of this weekend's meeting of the PRD's national council (still ongoing). The council just voted 146-97 against the proposal of Dolores Padierna (IDN) to put the alliances on hold, a test of strength where the pro-alliance group of Jesús Ortega came up on top. The alliances will, as agreed earlier, be left to each individual state council - the highest PRD authority in each of Mexico's federal units - so that the local PRD branches will have the final decisions. 


Given this delegation of power to the state level, AMLO's words are on the surface peculiar, in the sense that if is not clear why possible future PRD decisions, decided upon centrally and to be affirmed on the state levels, to enter into more PAN alliances would constitute "treason." Indeed, if anyone has committed treason, party wise, it is AMLO, who notably ditched the PRD in the 2009 federal elections and asked his followers to not cast a vote for the PRD but instead PT and Convergencia, given hia failure to impose Alejandro Encinas as the PRD's national president in 2008. Yet in AMLO-speak, of course "treason" simply refers to the practice that the PRD is not anymore fully toeing the line and obeying the commands of its former presidential candidate.


In parallel, it is equally clear that the movement-party advocates within the PRD, will not obey to the majority - democratic - will; having lost an additional vote 142-93 to call for new internal PRD elections for party president in December, IDN and its allies simply resorted to their timeworn tactics of coercion, by "taking" the speakers podium, preventing any further discussions of the council. It is an embarrassing charade. 

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.

AMLO will seek to retake control of the PRD this weekend

Despite having failed to have Alejandro Encinas elected as PRD president in 2008 - a cochinero that took 8 months to resolve, and nearly tore the PRD apart - AMLO is going again on the offensive to retake control of the PRD, through calling upon his followers, loyalists or opportunists alike, to kick out the national PRD leadership.

This weekend, the movement-advocates within the PRD - those who are often labeled as "radicals," yet who like AMLO are often socially conservative and want the PRD to remain intimately tied to AMLO - are launching a direct attack on the leadership of Jesús Ortega and his social democratic Nueva Izquierda faction, which currently controls the party. 


Eight corrientes have signed on to a declaration that calls for Ortega to step down in December 2010, but that also attacks the recent alliances with PAN. Judging by the statements of some, the goal is also to simply have Ortega ousted as leader this weekend.

Ortega, to recall, only started his 3-year presidency in December 2008 and his three-year term would then end in 2012. More important still, party disunity and yet another harrowing internal fight - the 2008 internal election took eighth months to resolve, and nearly destroyed the party - is simply the last thing the PRD needs. Especially given the hugely important elections in Guerrero and above all Mexico State next year, it seems hard to fathom that Ortega's opponents are going on the war path. Yet this infighting can only be understood from the logic of movement-advococates: While Ortega and Nueva Izquierda, along with his principal ally Alianza Democrática Nacional (ADN), seek to build an institutionalized organization autonomous of its old strongman, AMLO and the movement-advocates want the PRD to remain a loose movement-like party that is chiefly a tool at the disposal of a "cause," which, it is now clear, remains AMLO's presidential bid. Amazingly, AMLO and the movement-advocates are willing to risk yet another brutal internal party war by launching their nth attack on Ortega.

Yet while eight corrientes or internal party factions have signed on to the war document against its leadership, they do not appear to have the votes: Only IDN, led nominally by Dolores Padierna but de facto by her disgraced husband René Bejarano, has a significant number of councilors, but all the others, including Izquierda Social of Martí Batres, who holds the powerful portfolio of secretary of social development in Mexico City, and Red de Unidad Nacional de las Izquierdas (RUNI), which was recently launched by AMLO ultraloyalist Alejandro Encinas and also attracts some old cardenistas, have still very little presence on the PRD's National Council, and it seems doubtful they will get the 160 or so votes required to oust Ortega. 

Miguel Borbosa, who took over as national coordinator of Nueva Izquierda after Jesús Zambrano, in turn, accused some of the Ortega opponents within PRD to be tied to Enrique Peña Nieto. To be sure, should Ortega be ousted, the PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State will tumble, and Peña Nieto is almost certain to have a priísta succeed him as governor of Mexico State. As such, Peña Nieto can only hope that Andrés Manuel López Obrador's attack on Ortega will be successful. Regardless, expect quite a ruckus this weekend.

"I am free, because I am innocent": Seven imprisoned Guanajuato women finally free

María Araceli Camargo Juárez, Ofelia Segura Frías, Yolanda Martínez Montoya, Liliana Morales Moreno, Ana Rosa Padrón Alarcón, Susana Dueñas Rocha and Bonifacia Andrade Hurtado were finally set free yesterday, after spending between two and seven years in prison accused of infanticide. The real issue, of course, is abortion, which is illegal in Guanajuato, yet this is only half the story: While abortion only carried a penalty of maximum three years, the women were accused of infanticide, which carries a significantly stricter penalty (though after UN pressure, the government succumbed to reform the laws); some had received up to 27 years in prison for this.  

But the kicker is this: Most of the women, all poor campesinas, appear to simply have had miscarriages, having suffered beatings - several of them had been raped - and were moreover coerced to confess to their "crime" by state prosecutors.

Yet rather than apologize for this travesty of justice, the state government, headed by Governor Juan Manuel Oliva, stubbornly and stupidly refuses to admit it did a mistake and that the women were innocent. Given the fighting spirit of these women and their clamor to have their name cleared, the matter will now most likely move to the courts, ensuring more bad publicity for Juan Manuel Oliva, who tried to please the women with promises of housing assistance, and offered state vehicles to transport them, which they rejected. 

Yolanda Martínez Montoya, in prison for more than six years, gets the final word:

"I want nothing. I want to be me. I don't want to be tied to anyone who has something to do with the government, because they caused me so much harm. I want nothing from them"

Reporter: "Was the government's offer in exchange for keeping silent?"

"It could be. One may deduce using logic."

Will AMLO succeed in tumbling the PAN-PRD alliances?

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto used the occasion of his fifth Report to the Mexico State Congress to attack the PAN-PRD alliances. Peña Nieto, in the clearest yet sign of his fear of such an opposition alliance, absurdly and shamelessly likened these alliances by two democratic parties to a threat equivalent to that of organized crime. It was a moment of infamy.


Yet Peña Nieto may soon breathe a sigh of relief: GAP, the Grupo de Acción Política, which claims a majority on the PRD's Mexico State council, declared its opposition to a PAN-PRD alliance and a common candidate in next year's state elections to replace Peña Nieto's successor. GAP allied with current national PRD leader Jesús Ortega in 2008, yet now opposes Ortega's plans for a common candidate, and is reportedly backing AMLO's bid to be PRD's presidential candidate in 2012.  GAP, notably, wants its leader Horacio Duarte to be the PRD's gubernatorial candidate, and its recent opposition to the alliances has the semblance of a quid pro quo with AMLO's supporters. AMLO, to recall, has been adamantly against the PAN-PRD coalitions since the start, though several of his "devoted" followers such as the IDN faction, tacitly agreed to the alliances. Now, however, IDN and other corrientes are vocally denouncing them, in Mexico State and elsewhere, following AMLO's bidding. And it seems likely that GAP is now doing the same thing.


PRD national deputy and coordinator of its parliamentary group Alejandro Encinas, also a strong contender for the Mexico State nomination, somewhat bizarrely contested Peña Nieto arguing that the only threat to fear is the unity of the left, meaning PRD-PT-Convergencia. Yet Encinas knows very well that Peña Nieta was referring to a broader PAN-PRD alliance, and not just one by the three left parties.


Meanwhile, in the PRD proper, despite the huge success of the recent alliances in Oaxaca, Sinaloa, and Puebla, the more "radical" elements in the party such as the IDN and others are yet again  clamoring for Jesús Ortega to step down as party president. So much for party unity in the face of a clear adversary: In fine Stalinist tradition, the andremanualistas and opportunists of the party are at least as bent on  attacking the social-democratic wing of the PRD than either PRI or PAN, for that matter. 


Conspiracy journalist par excellence, Ricardo Alemán, claims that "it remains clear that there will be no PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State and in Guerrero, and with the help of PAN, PRI will snatch from PRD the states of Baja California Sur and Guerrero." 
This seems to me to be jumping the gun at this point, even for Alemán.