Mexico's party leaders - gossip time!

El Universal had recently a very informal survey, one might say, of the heads of Mexico's political parties. For political junkies (whatever that expression really means), it is quite amusing reading. And not quite gossip either - as the information is actually true. Sadly.

We learn that:
- Jorge Kahwagi Macari, until recently PANAL leader, has a 10-million dollar yacht, and lives in a 5,500-meter square house. A true representative of the teachers that comprise the PANAL party, in other words.

- Jorge Emilio González Martínez, the "niño verde,"nominally head of the PVEM, the Mexican Green Party, which is anything but, just took his girlfriend who is half his age (she must be-according to the article, she just finished the preperatoria(!) to Disneyland. And that despite being a party leader, he did not attend or head any political event in 2010. Rather, he goes daily to play tennis in the wealthy Bosque de las Lomas area where he also lives, or to the Sport City in Santa Fe. And he proudly wears the most expensive designer clothes out there, including Brioni Suits. What a genuine representative of the post-materialist Green agenda!-

- Luis Walton Aburto, leader of the nominally left party Convergencia, which all of a sudden threw its lot with AMLO to become a "radical" party, is ultra rich, from owning gas stations and private schools. He also proudly tells us that he gains tons of money. What a great representative of los de abajo, of the downtrodden and poor!

There are those who come significantly better off. Humberto Moreira at least has a good sense of humor; PAN's Gustavo Madero is quite the wine connoisseur, PT's Alberto Anaya is as unpretentious as one can get,  with crooked glasses and worn shoes, and PRD's Jesús Zambrano still shops at the corner store in Culhuacán, a very modest zone where he still lives, and likes to drink and play guitar with Carlos Navarrete and Guadalupe Acosta.

What more info does one need? To the polls!

An important and overlooked statistic: PRI governs less people today than 2006

Milenio puts the spotlight on a very important electoral statistic:

While PRI today governs 19 of Mexico's 32 states, which is three more than at the start of Calderón's sexenio, it actually governs four million less citizens. The steamroller wins on July 3 nothwithstanding: All of the states were already governed by PRI.

While PRI took Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Yucatán, Nayarit and Tlaxcala from PAN, and Zacatecas from PRD, it lost the very important states of Sonora (due to the ABC nursery scandal), and Sinaloa, Oaxaca, and Puebla - states it had never lost before, in 81 years, thanks to the PRD-PAN alliances.

All eyes are now on Michoacán, where voter preferences seem to be split almost exactly in thirds for PAN, PRD, and PRI.

Luis Armando Reynoso Femat kicked out of PAN - again.

Former Aguascalientes Governor Luis Armando Reynoso Femat was just kicked out of the PAN, for having sabotaged the PAN candidate in favor of the PRI's gubernatorial candidate Carlos Lozano de la Torre. in last year's election.

This is the second attempt: An earlier attempt was rejected just a few weeks ago by Mexico's electoral tribunal TEPJF for procedural errors.

Aguascalientes was notably one of the PAN states that shifted to PRI last year, apparently much thanks to Reynoso Femat.

Much bitterness here: Even though the local PAN leader, Jorge López Martín, acknowledged that Reynoso Femat can still appeal to the Tribunal, he said they will expel him from the party "as many times as necessary."

Femicides in Sinaloa

Credit to Governor Mario López Valdez ("Malova") of Sinaloa for taking the issue of femicides seriously and not brushing it under the carpet, as has largely done e.g. Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico State:

Malova considered the rise in femicides in Sinaloa "alarming," and called for a special investigation by his justice department to analyze the so far 56 reported cases of femicides this year, where the women have been targeted principally for being women. Last year saw 111 cases in the state.

Gordillo's PANAL party under investigation by IFE

Mexico's federal electoral institute is carrying an investigation of Partido Nueva Alianza (PANAL), the teachers union-based party controlled completely by  Elba Esther Gordillo, due to "unusual movements" in its bank account. 

PANAL's new president Luis Castro Obregón seems to fit the party like hand in glove.  He denied that the audit has anything to do with recent hurling of accusations of corruption between Gordillo and Miguel Angel Yunes, though refused to offer any more comments on the matter. 

Then, asked if he knew the name of Ricardo Viso Veligson, a man who has endorsed 18 cheques to the party for over 7 million pesos,  he simply refused to confirm or deny anything.

At least the former party president Jorge Kahwagi Macari - he of the 5,500-square meter house, a mini-horse collection,  and a 10-million dollar yacht  - was somewhat entertaining in his eccentricity, by way of comparison. 

Elba Esther Gordillo's effect on 2006 a myth?

A very interesting article in today's El Universal, by CIDE researcher and political scientist José Antonio Crespo.

In a nutshell: While Elba Esther Gordillo certainly made a pact with Calderón in 2006, in an unseemly votes-for-political positions, the value of her votes are vastly exaggerated.

Why? While it is well known that her party PANAL received far more votes for its list of national deputies than for its presidential candidate - herein was the very bargain, where the SNTE-organized teachers and their families would vote for Calderón for president and their own party for lawmakers - yet a a forthcoming study by Javier Aparacio, one of CIDE's very sharpest minds, now reveals that of the SNTE/PANAL teachers, only 22 percent actually followed the order to so, while 27 percent voted for AMLO.

What does this mean? That  Calderón paid a very heavy price for very little, and that Gordillo's bargaining power with regards to her PANAL party may be a castle made of sand: She does not deliver.

Party leaders, take note.

Great leap forward for AMLO's MORENA movement to become a party

News buried far within the paper, and undeservedly so, as it may be very relevant news for the Mexican political scene: The Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional or MORENA of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is set to become a "Political Association" the coming Oct. 1- a major step toward becoming a party.

The setting will be the day after AMLO is set to end his latest tour of Mexico, of which I admit I have now lost count.

According to AMLO,

Parties are very discredited, including the progressive ones, because there are vices that turn them into the mold of the traditional ones, and they make them into the mold of traditional and they alienate them from what the people say.

Unless you have a true party of the people, whose will AMLO claims to know so well. This sounds like the beginning of a new party to me.

Given the continued fights betwen AMLO and the PRD, perhaps it would be better, to slightly paraphrase Lyndon B Johnson, to actually have AMLO pissing on the tent from the outside, rather than having him inside the tent pissing... inside.