Mexican political parties: They've cost 37 billion pesos since 2000.

Since the coming of democracy in Mexico in 2000, the costs to Mexican taxpayers of financing the country's political parties have been close to 37 billion pesos, Centro de Documentación, Información y Análisis of the Mexican congress reports.

* In this period, nine parties disappeared, despite receiving 1.9 billion pesos in subsidies
* PAN has received around 10, the same as PRI, while PRD has received 5.7 billion.

However, minor parties receive a disproportionately high amount: The Green Party, which has absolutely nothing to do with environmentalism but is a franchise party at the service of the highest bidder, has received over 3 billion pesos. PT: 2.5 billion pesos, and Convergencia 2.2. PANAL of Elba Esther Gordillo received almost 1.2 billion pesos, despite existing only since 2006.

It seems to me the state subsidy to parties is in quite a few cases perverted by minor parties who are in it primarily for one reason: To get their hands on this money. This is about as far away from the original goal as possible, namely to further democracy by ensuring a plurality of party options. I strongly support state subsidies of parties, but this is undermining the entire practice.

State level changes 2008-2010 show rising poverty in PRI states

Here's a graphic from Milenio that shows 1) the  number of social program beneficiaries (Oportunidades, 70 y más, Empleo temporal and Liconsa), a proxy for the number of poor, 2) the percentage of poverty in the poorest states, and the most interesting, 3) the change in poverty rates from the crisis in 2008 until 2010 - not all states had more poor, but those run by the PRI tend to have the worst numbers, with exception of PAN-run Guanajuato. See graphic:

Oportunidades spending doubled under Calderón

Amidst all the talk of rising poverty figures in Mexico, here's one case where I think Calderón deserves credit:

The highly successful conditional cash-transfer program Oportunidades saw its budget double from 2005 to 2011 - it jumped from 28 billion to 57 billion pesos. This is truly impressive.

While no magic bullet to end poverty, Oportunidades has proven vastly succesful in terms of enrolling more children in school, making sure they stay there, and improving nutrition for infants and children, among other gains.In Mexico it now covers almost 6 million households, or 29 million people. Most live on the countryside,  and not in the big cities.

There is a reason why this has been copied by so many other countries, most famously in Brazil's Bolsa Familia.

Graphic from El Universal of its component parts:

The cost of Mexico's 2012 election: 16 billion pesos. Church weighs in.

Mexico's federal electoral institute (IFE) has requested almost 16 billion pesos for the 2012 presidential election. This whopping sim is particularly notable as the 2007-08 electoral reform had as one of its main goals to reduce the cost of elections, principally due to only allowing parties to contract tv/radio advertisements through slots allotted to them by IFE, rather than purchasing themselves at a massive cost.

Head of IFE Leonardo Valdés defended the cost - 30 percent higher than in 2006 - as a  product of IFE's new functions that include, among others, much more expanded media monitoring, but also due to increased insecurity as a product of the fight with and between drug gangs. He also insists  that the institute is ready for 2012, though public approval of - and faith in - IFE has been dropping notably in recent months.

Some of this may be attributed to the Catholic church, which demanded that the institute be a representative of citizens and not of parties, while it denounced the IFE's rising operating costs. The church also attacked the "restrictive laws" of 2007 that it claims restrict freedom of expression, even though it was not passed by IFE but by Congress and IFE merely has to follow the new legislation. It also conspicuously made no mention of the recent IFE/TEPJF verdict that the Archdiocese broke the law in its attack on the PRD.

One of church's points is well taken, though: It criticized the lack of autonomy of state electoral institutes and their ease of manipulation vis-a-vis state governors. This is truly an increasing problem that was noted by several of IFE's councilors I interviewed last summer.

Internal PRI documents: Enrique Peña Nieto already has 90,000 operators

Internal PRI documents leaked to Milenio suggest that outgoing Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto already has, through the network Fuerza Mexiquense, more than 90,000 "political operators" around Mexico ready to promote his highly likely PRI presidential candidacy.

The  Fuerza Mexiquense grew threefold in 2010-11, and played key roles in particularly the elections of Veracruz, Quintana Roo and Nayarit, and above all Yucatán, essentially taking over Ivonne Ortega's campaign.

Followers of Mexican politics may recall that Fuerza Mexiquense is not, however, the creation of Peña Nieto , but was rather set up by former PRI governor Arturo Montiel, who lost the 2006 PRI nomination due to the massive corruption scandals of his government. Peña Nieto, to be sure, has done absolutely nothing to investigate Montiel, his political mentor.

Now, Peña Nieto's expansion of Montiel's Fuerza Mexiquense is merely yet another telltale sign that rather than representing anything "new," Peña Nieto represents continuity rather than any rupture with the "old" PRI.

PRD pays off debt from 2006 encampments

It took the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) five years to pay off the debt the party incurred when following the exhortations of its 2006 presidential candidate to "defend" his claimed victory by setting up a huge Mexico City encampment, as well as storming the congressional dais at several locations, actions for which the PRD was fined 52 million pesos.

The PRD was left with a crippling debt thanks to this as well as a massive debt contracted by former party president Rosario Robles, which ascended to 713 million pesos by 2008. Under party president Jesús Ortega (2008-11), it drastically reduced its debt, now down to 257. The PRD also sold off a building bought by Robles (with a loss - it was uninhabitable, an a monument over Robles's disastrous party presidency), and will now move back to its historic location on Insurgentes/Monterrey 50.

IFE gave the party a 94.4 out of 100 for transparency in its expense accounts - compared to 58.3 for the PRI.

AMLO's 5-year head start: 170,000 political operators

Given AMLO's propensity for exaggeration, these figures should be taken with a pinch of salt, but given his 5-year head start - AMLO already in 2006 started the work of setting up the structure for the 2012 election - they appear accurate: His MORENA movement claims to have 34,000 electoral committees in the country, with a total of 170,000 political operators. In addition, AMLO has the support of the IDN faction of PRD, which overlaps with the "Movement for Hope" (MNE) of the discredited René Bejarano-Dolores Padierna couple.

AMLO's movement/electoral structure in turn builds on the Redes Ciudadanas, or "Citizen Networks" that operated in parallel to the three parties of his 2006 coalition.