One question for AMLO: Why bother participating?

It's quite circular, actually: PT and AMLO have been promoting various spots or campaign ads recently, and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has ordered some of them to be removed for violating electoral law. Most recently, AMLO and the PT launched another spot with images of former presidents such as Carlos Salinas, current president Felipe Calderón, and others, with the label "mafia" attached to them. IFE ordered it withdrawn for denigrating the presidential office.  AMLO, in turn, argues that this is merely evidence that IFE is controlled by.... you got it, the mafia. In AMLO's words, 

"We all know that the institutions have been undermined, because the serve a mafia of power, not the people."

You might consider it a preemptive strike - label IFE, TEJPJ, the congress, the PRD, whatever, as "mafia" ahead of any adversarial decisions. But it also begs the question: If the dice are so truly loaded against him, if the PAN, PRI, the PRD under Ortega for sure, all the institutions, are either part of the "mafia," are "traitors," or both - why bother participating in the first place?

Sad day for IFE: Federal Electoral Institute disappoints greatly by refusing to deal with church

It's a disgrace: The Mexican Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) voted 7-1 to simply pass on the compliant it received from the PRD regarding the extreme interference by leading members of the Mexican catholic high cleargy, above all the Mexico City Archdiocese spokesman Hugo Valdemar, and Guadalajara cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, who on many occasions have called on voters not to vote for the PRD, a party they smeared as "fascist." Rather than giving an opinion on the matter, IFE voted to simply pass the case on to the Interior Ministry. Yet by doing so - by refusing to take responsibility on a matter that, given the church blatant violation of the constitution, may have a crucial impact on the 2012 elections - the case is effectively dead: Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora has the entire time been utterly passive and deferent to the church's extremist declarations, refusing to to his job of defending the Mexican Constitution and democracy. 


IFE Coincilor Alfredo Figueroa was a lone voice that spoke up for IFE's autonomy, arguing it shouldn't merely defer to SeGob, or the Interior Ministry

"We can call on the President of the Republic, but not on Sandoval; we can call on different actors, but not on the church....why did we create an autonomous organ for later to abdicate [responsibility]?"

Others like Marco Antonio Baños, who in the end voted for passing on the case to SeGob, nonetheless argued IFE should still take a stance again Sandoval Iñiguez and Hugo Valdemar. Yet the IFE refused to to so. One may consequently expect the most extremist and falangist elements of the Mexican Church to feel emboldened and merely step up their attacks. 
Qué vergüenza.

Broad backlash to Calderón's comments on AMLO. Why did he do it?

Calderón's petty attack on AMLO is receiving quite a backlash from broad swaths of Mexico's political elite. While the ruling PAN at first supported the president's statements, some key PAN cadres such as Senator Santiago Creel and  Manuel Espino, no less - the latter head of PAN during the 2006 electoral debacle - more than implied that Calderón's remarks were unbefitting of a president. Creel dixit: "There are times to compete, and others to coincide and govern" 

Other reactions:

- Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, PRI deputy and president of the Chamber of deputies, said the remarks were "inopportune and unnecessary."

- The key priísta Emilio Gamboa Patrón, head of the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares (CNOP) and a contender for the PRI party presidency, said:

"What Mexico needs is unity and peace, not opening old wellsprings, and Calderón shouldn't return to talk about 2006. I think his statement was very untimely." 

Notably, various IFE councilors berated Calderón, and even the president of IFE's council, Leonardo Valdés, weighed in:

"I cannot share any indications that could cast doubt on the professional activities of the institute [IFE] to organize and aribrate elections"

IFE councilor Francisco Guerrero as well sought to foreshadow implications for 2012:

"We want an election that, although competitive, takes place within the margins of the law, and while the President as a citizen can well offer his point of view, it is important to remember that because of his office he is obligated to create conditions of unity and governability for the country."

Ouch. Given these harsh reactions, which Calderón surely must have foreseen, why did he do it? Only he could answer that question, but it is a quite ominous signal that Calderón, like Fox in 2006, will not stand on the sidelines when it comes to electing his successor as president. Will he similarly intervene against the likely candidates of Ebrard and Peña Nieto in 2012?


For now, a more pertinent worry is likely to be Michoacán, where his sister María Luisa Calderón Hinojosa is very keen on succeeding Leonel Godoy as governor in 2011: Fears exist among the state PRD that Calderón will go to considerate lengths to ensure her victory. To the perredistas, the now-infamous Michoacanazo was merely the first of more political attacks to come.  


On a side note: Chucho Ortega, PRD president, for the nth time used the occasion of Calderón's comments to reiterate there will be no PAN-PRD common presidential candidate in 2012. Ahí está.

PRD won't expel AMLO: Ortega refuses to fall into AMLO's trap

I remain convinced that what AMLO really desires is to be expelled from the PRD, and almost certainly so should the party choose Ebrard as its 2012 contender: It would allow him to denounce the PRD as simply in cahoots with Calderón and present the expulsion as yet another act of the complot or plot of the "mafia" against him.

Jesús Ortega, however, declared the party would not expel AMLO - this no matter how much they might desire it, should I add: It would simply convert the internal party fracture into an open break, as AMLO would draw a significant sector of the party with him. Ortega also noted there is no such thing as a "leave of absence" - one is either a member of the party and campaigns for it, or one does not. Don't expect this, however, from preventing AMLO from producing his own candidate for the Mexico State governorship, likely to be inept AMLO acolyte Senator Yeidkol Polevnsky, should a PAN-PRD alliance materialize.

In defense of AMLO: Calderón's criticism petty

In 2006, the PAN campaign infamously launched a barrage of ads denouncing AMLO as a "danger to Mexico." Whatever one thinks or thought of AMLO, rejecting one's major political opponent in a democracy as a "danger" - one that had successfully governed Mexico City for five years, and was backed by more than a third of the electorate - was a despicably low blow that exposed the PAN candidate as highly contemptuous of the Mexican electorate. It was, to be sure, also condemned by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), which banned several of the most offensive attack ads.

In the Mexican context, a president should be above petty political fight, yet Calderón in an interview yesterday with the (excellent) journalist Salvador Camarena, openly defended the 2006 slogan as "true and valid," and the AMLO moreover remain a danger to Mexico.

While it may seem strange from a US context of heavy campaigning from the White House, relatively clear rules regulate how much the president can do of active political proselytizing. Yet even more so, such direct criticism of AMLO, a man who today holds no elected office or appointed position, is simply petty and unworthy of the president; it should be beneath him.

Secretary of Health José Ángel Córdova and Guanajuato: Kicking against the El Yunque pricks

It is an open secret, which makes it no secret at all, that José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, federal secretary of health, is very interested in becoming the next governor of Guanajuato. A couple of days ago, ahead of the the Semana Binacional de Salud, or Binational Health Week, a major international health conference that just happened to be arranged in his native Guanajuato, Córdova Villalobos warned that the PAN could lose the state in 2012, due to internal "fractures" in the ruling Partido Acción Nacional, PAN.

What the health secretary is really saying is that due to the extremist policies of the state government, headed by Governor  Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez, it might lose the state in 2012. The local state branch of PAN is in Guanajuato in hands of El Yunque, an extreme catholic far right falangist secret organization, and the public policies of Oliva Ramírez' government have been disaster: The state was recently forced, due to local and international pressure, to release scores of women locked up for having had miscarriages and abortions, and has an extremely retrograde education system that virulently fights any sex education or information on contraceptives. Not coincidentally, the state has Mexico's highest rate of teen pregnancy. It is also the only one of Mexico's 32 federal entities that has refused to pass a law to prevent violence against women. So much for "family values."

José Ángel Córdova is painfully aware that the backlash against these extreme policies may well cause PAN to lose the state, and this is the real reason behind his thinly veiled attack on the current PAN government of Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez. It would serve the PAN and Mexico well to rid its party organization of the rightwing extremists of El Yunque; a win for Córdova in Guanajuato in 2012 - he is both a PAN moderate, and as a health professional is painfully aware of the destructive effect on El Yunque's influence on policy - would only be a good thing.

Jesús Zambrano: AMLO acts like a "Tabascan god"

PRD national deputy Jesús "Tragabalas" Zambrano Grijalva, a vice president of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, responded angrily to AMLO's threats to "pedir licencia," roughly to request a "leave of absence" from the PRD should the party defy its old caudillo and still go in alliance with PAN for the Mexico State elections in 2011. Referring to AMLO as a "Dios Santito tabasqueño," Zambrano angrily retorted:

"The PRD is not a Metro wagon that one gets on and off whenever it suits one. The PRD is a political institute that should be an instrument of society for change and not for the intentions of any individual in paritcular, or of a wider group."

Yet this is of course exactly how AMLO regards the PRD: As an instrument to serve him unconditionally. If it chooses to disobey his orders, he will readily back its opponents, as he proved in the 2009 federal elections. Yet he will not resign from the party: he rather hopes that his eventual provocations will cause the PRD leadership to loose its temper and expel him, allowing him to claim the role of victim and dismiss the PRD official party organs as merely members of the "mafia" trying to sabotage his 2012 run. Or 2018. Or 2024 - it does not really matter.