The once-powerful Mexico City Secretary of Social Development Martí Batres Guadarrama will likely leave the government of the Distrito Federal headed by Marcelo Ebrard in near future. After Ebrard made it tacitly (or not so tacitly) clear that Batres would not be the next Chief of Government of Mexico City, Ebrard stepped up his activism and participation of AMLO events. Ebrard retaliated by taking away several responsibilities from Batres' portfolio.
Batres is one of the top leaders of Izquierda Social, a social-movement oriented offshoot of the IDN, led by the Bejarano couple, and represents the most radical wing of the PRD - not necessary radical in terms of left/right, but radical as in having absolutely no respect for institutions, preferring to storm the Congress podium and engage in fistfights to seek to block legislation from being passed. Now, Batres has stepped up his criticisms of the PAN-PRD alliances, which are backed by Marcelo Ebrard, to the point of participating in AMLO's barnstorming of Mexico State to oppose them. Expect him to be replaced soon.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Ortega agrees with Aguachile and Aguachile with him: IFE bows to church
Especially considering that we are now celebrating the 20th anniversary of IFE, the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute, it's decision to refrain from commenting on the blatant illegality of the church's interference in politics and simply pass on PRD's complain to the Interior Ministroy, was simply evading responsibility, as Jesús Ortega, president of the PRD put it - giving in to church pressure. Without sounding too alarmist, this to me bodes ill for 2012, especially with Ebrard as the left's candidate: If the church can get away with calling the party "fascist," Ebrard a "dictator," the Supreme Court "corrupt" - what is yet to come?
Five years of Peña Nieto: Mexico State worst in country for femicides.
The many and mostly unresolved murders in Júarez, Chihuahua, introduced into the mainstream a horrifying word, "femicide," or the deliberate killing of women.
Yet according to the Observatorio Ciudadano Nacional del Feminicidio, the state that topped the list of most women murders in 2009 was not Chihuahua or any of the "drug war" states, but Mexico State: Out of 1700 registered murders of women, 309 happened in Edomex.
Now these are, to be sure, absolute figures, and Mexico State's huge population base must be taken in mind, but it is nonetheless an alarmingly high figure, particularly as Mexico City only counts 80 cases.
Yet another dent in Peña Nieto's media-created image.
Monday, October 11, 2010
193-88: PRD's institutions won over AMLO's plazismo
Despite AMLO's highly active mobilization the past weeks against the proposed PRD-PRD alliance in Mexico State, the PRD state council in Edomex voted 193-88 in favor of starting official talks with PAN and other forces - that is, it approved the PRD going in coalition with other parties than the PT and Convergencia in order to try beat PRI in the state's upcoming (July 3, 2010) gubernatorial elections. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor: 193-88, or more than two thirds majority.
The vote is clearly significant in itself, as a PRD-PAN alliance is pretty much the only chance the left will have to block a new PRI governor in Mexico state from 2011-2017. Last time the party tried, in 2005, AMLO was at the pinnacle of his popularity, yet despite his barnstorming of the state in favor of his candidate Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz, she barely pulled 24 percent, coming in third place behind even PAN - far behind Enrique Peña Nieto.
The 2005 election cast its shadow on yesterday's vote: First, many perredistas are painfully aware a go-it-alone PRD-PT-Convergencia candidate simply will not win. Not a snowball's chance in hell. Moreover, many in the local party structure were highly antagonized by AMLO in 2005, as he imposed his candidate and rode roughshod over the party structure by preferring his Redes Ciudadanas, or extra-party Citizen Networks, rather than the PRD proper. I've heard this expressed on many occasions from key perredistas in the state. This explains the massive 2/3 vote in favor of an alliance candidate, despite AMLO's labeling it as "treason."
Should AMLO follow through on his threats to present his own candidate, the battle is surely lost for the PRD, as well as for AMLO's own candidate -Polevnsky again, or PRD chamber of deputies group leader Alejandro Encinas - though the inevitable loss of whomever AMLO will convince to run will likely be blamed on the PRD and the "mafia."
Should AMLO be convinced not to postulate Polevnsky or Encinas, a PAN-PRD alliance has a chance, but only with a strong perredista candidate such as Senator Héctor Bautista López. While PAN has been busy building a significant party operation in Mexico State the past years, it is much more palatable for PAN supporters to back a moderate perredista than it is for PRD voters to back a PAN candidate.
Let the negotiations begin.
The vote is clearly significant in itself, as a PRD-PAN alliance is pretty much the only chance the left will have to block a new PRI governor in Mexico state from 2011-2017. Last time the party tried, in 2005, AMLO was at the pinnacle of his popularity, yet despite his barnstorming of the state in favor of his candidate Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz, she barely pulled 24 percent, coming in third place behind even PAN - far behind Enrique Peña Nieto.
The 2005 election cast its shadow on yesterday's vote: First, many perredistas are painfully aware a go-it-alone PRD-PT-Convergencia candidate simply will not win. Not a snowball's chance in hell. Moreover, many in the local party structure were highly antagonized by AMLO in 2005, as he imposed his candidate and rode roughshod over the party structure by preferring his Redes Ciudadanas, or extra-party Citizen Networks, rather than the PRD proper. I've heard this expressed on many occasions from key perredistas in the state. This explains the massive 2/3 vote in favor of an alliance candidate, despite AMLO's labeling it as "treason."
Should AMLO follow through on his threats to present his own candidate, the battle is surely lost for the PRD, as well as for AMLO's own candidate -Polevnsky again, or PRD chamber of deputies group leader Alejandro Encinas - though the inevitable loss of whomever AMLO will convince to run will likely be blamed on the PRD and the "mafia."
Should AMLO be convinced not to postulate Polevnsky or Encinas, a PAN-PRD alliance has a chance, but only with a strong perredista candidate such as Senator Héctor Bautista López. While PAN has been busy building a significant party operation in Mexico State the past years, it is much more palatable for PAN supporters to back a moderate perredista than it is for PRD voters to back a PAN candidate.
Let the negotiations begin.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
PRD state branch to decide on PAN-PRD elections: Does it really matter?
The PRD of Mexico State are meeting today to decide finally on the possibility of going in alliance with other parties, principally the Partido Acción Nacional, for the 2011 gubernatorial elections in the state. Ahead of the meeitng of the PRD state council, state party president Luis Sánchez Jiménez asked the party's Comisión de Garantías y Vigilancia, or internal watchdog on rules and procedure, to decide on whether the council requires a simple majority or 2/3 majority vote to approve the alliances.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, has already declared that regardless of the outcome of the vote, he will reject such an alliance, dismissing in the process the the right of the party branch to decide for itself whether to go in an alliance or not, and that he moreover will ask for a "leave of absence" from the PRD - a term that simply does not exist; one is either a member of the party or one is not. More of consequence, Alejandro Encinas, who had earlier denied that he was seeking the nomination for PRD governor, now says he will only run as head of a PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition. That is, should the PRD state council this weekend decide to launch a common candidate with PAN to seek to defeat PRI and its 81-year grip on power in Mexico State, AMLO will launch his own candidate and that will likely be Encinas. In the process, however, the left might well be destroyed in the the state of Mexico, allowing for a PRI successor to Enrique Peña Nieto, and for Peña Nieto to return PRI to the presidency in 2012.
As I believe Winston Churchill once observed, there are wars, there are civil wars, and then there are... internal party wars - the latter being the most vicious of all.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, has already declared that regardless of the outcome of the vote, he will reject such an alliance, dismissing in the process the the right of the party branch to decide for itself whether to go in an alliance or not, and that he moreover will ask for a "leave of absence" from the PRD - a term that simply does not exist; one is either a member of the party or one is not. More of consequence, Alejandro Encinas, who had earlier denied that he was seeking the nomination for PRD governor, now says he will only run as head of a PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition. That is, should the PRD state council this weekend decide to launch a common candidate with PAN to seek to defeat PRI and its 81-year grip on power in Mexico State, AMLO will launch his own candidate and that will likely be Encinas. In the process, however, the left might well be destroyed in the the state of Mexico, allowing for a PRI successor to Enrique Peña Nieto, and for Peña Nieto to return PRI to the presidency in 2012.
As I believe Winston Churchill once observed, there are wars, there are civil wars, and then there are... internal party wars - the latter being the most vicious of all.
"The disastrous Juan": Salvador García Soto rips Juan Molinar Horcasitas apart
Juan Molinar Horcasitas is decidedly one of the most controversial members of Felipe Calderón's government; the current Secretary of Communications and Transportation has most recently been pummeled for his appointment of the seemingly utterly unqualfied Mony de Swaan as head of COFETEL, the Federal Commission of Telecommunications, and of the granting of media spectrum licenses far below market value to Televisa and Nextel. Yet as commentator Salvador García Soto in El Universal points out, there is much more:
"There are people who should never opt for public service. They neither have a vocation for service nor provide any benefit to society they should serve. One graphic case, judging by this results as a functionary and public servant, is Juan Molinar Horcasitas. His tenure in different public institutions over the past 10 years has left a trail of errors, problems, disasters and inefficiencies that have had high political, social and even economic costs."Ouch. Yet he is absolutely right: Juan Molinar Horcasitas is a case of a man who was a great academic, yet who has left a trail of destruction in his wake wherever he has gone. The time for his retirement from government "service" is long overdue.
Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez disgusted by gays
Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez recently informed us that gay marriages "disgust" him.
I am not really convinced that the moral credentials of a publicly elected governor who calls on his critics to "go fuck their mothers" warrant that Emilio González Márquez should opine on... well, anything.
I am not really convinced that the moral credentials of a publicly elected governor who calls on his critics to "go fuck their mothers" warrant that Emilio González Márquez should opine on... well, anything.
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