Wife of murdered Guerrero federal deputy accuses mayor

Lucía Leyva Rojas, widow of the murdered PRI deputy  Moisés Villanueva de la Luz, all but accused mayor Willy Reyes Ramos of Tlapa de Comonfort of being behind the murder.

Granted there is no concrete evidence and everything is guilty until proven, but Reyes doesn't exactly inspire too much confidence or empathy: His response, rather than saying something along the lines of "I understand she is hurting and want to find the guilty, but it is not me," etc, has instead responded by asking the authorities to investigate the next-of-kin, meaning Villanueva's and his murdered driver's widow.

Not exactly a class act.

Mario Vargas Llosa reloaded: "detested and detestable PRI"

Mario Vargas Llosa's famous description of the PRI as a "perfect dictatorship" live on Televisa in 1990 - which led to the immediate end of his visit to Mexico and the great embarrassment of the authoritarian regime, has now been followed by a sequel, of sorts:

The Peruvian writer warned recently that Calderón's offensive against the narcos has failed, and that it may lead to the return of the "detested and detestable PRI."

The statement has, of course, not fallen well with the PRI. One measured response came from presidential hopeful (of sorts) Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who said Varga Llhosa doesn't know Mexico, and hadn't been too successful as a politician himself. Ouch. Senator Francisco Arroyo for his part dismissed the writer as an "old man of the Right."

PRI's Political Council (equivalent of party congress) is currently meeting, and doing everything possible to give the impression of unity - including the obligatory Beltrones-Peña Nieto handshake-hug.

The Council also notably decided that PRI´s 2012 presidential candidate will be decided in an open primary.

Who do you trust in Mexico? Family first, parties at bottom

Graphic from Milenio:

Milenio

Sad figures for many institutions, above all political parties, which are found at the bottom.

I found this part quite entertaining, though. (from the article on the study):

"The survey was also an exercise in associating political parties with songs, animals, and popular sayings. PRI was ranked as the loyal dog, the hardworking ant, fighting cock, and the sly fox, as well as the popular saying, "el que no tranza no avanza" (roughly, If you don't cheat, you won't get ahead), as well as the line from the song of El Rey, "with money and without money I always do what I want."

PAN was placed with the song  Contigo Aprendí, while PRD was referred to as a parrot "that talks without knowing what it says," and with the popular saying, “ni picha ni cacha ni deja batear” (or very roughly, neither helps nor gets out of the way)."

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas receives highest Mexican civil award

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is, in the end, the 2011 recipient of the Belisario Domínguez medal.

Many in PAN were opposed, yet they disliked even more the second strong candidate, Supreme Court minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, but she became unpalatable to the social conservatives in PAN following her recent vote against the extremist state-level "life-from-conception" abortion legislation.

Felicitaciones, Ingeniero. 

Price of a federal deputy's head: 300,000 pesos. Murderers caught.

300,000 pesos, or about $22,000: This is apparently the price for murdering a Federal Deputy in Mexico.
It seems Mexican authorities have actually captured the killers of PRI deputy Moisés Villanueva de la Luz, who was recently found murdered in Guerrero. According to the state prosecutor, four men carried out murder of Villanueva and his assistant, yet the mastermind was apparently a town councilor of Tlapa de Comonfort, whose name is still withheld, as he is still on the loose.

Yet who ordered the councilor to arrange for the deputy's murder? .

The new PRI: (image)

From Milenio

PRI big shots gathered to express their support for embattled PRI president Humberto Moreira Valdés. As Milenio observed, "735 years of PRI are backing Moreira," referring to the collective age of this old-boy network - I mean, the "New PRI."

Vicente Fox, a "pathological clown" - and a quote of the day

Former president Vicente Fox has been rambling on in the media the past days, shooting off in all directions. He's criticized the Federal Electoral Institute, and (there's much right in his criticism) for its arguably excessive regulation of primary debates, but as IFE pointedly shot back, Fox should truly keep his mouth shut when it comes to anything related to IFE - after all, his blatant intervention in the 2006 election was much of the cause for the 2007-8 electoral reform in the first place.

Then, he has the guts to sling dirt on Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, three-time presidential candidate and founder of the PRD, arguing that giving the Senate's Belisario Domínguez order to him would degrade its value.

I'm a longtime critic of Cárdenas for many reasons, but let us put things in perspective: This is a man who constantly fought for democracy, always firm (or rigid) in his convictions, and whose ardent opposition to the PRI dictatorship opened up political space for clowns like Fox to become a governor of Guanajuato, and then president, in the first place. To hear Fox, someone who blatantly sought to debase Mexico's institutions through launching the amazingly idiotic impeachment process against Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2005, with the admitted purpose of barring him from the 2006 presidential election, almost defies belief, hadn't it been for the fact that we are now well accustomed to Fox' many utterly stupid comments, which seems to multiply by each passing year since he left the presidency.

I find PRD president Jesús Zambrano's characterization of Vicente Fox as a "pathological clown" quite accurate.

PRI's Senator Francisco Labastida, the opponent of Fox and Cárdenas in the 2000 presidential election, and one of the absolutely more reasonable PRI legislators, said in a response to Fox's verbal diarrhea:

"Again he lost the golden opportunity to shut the hell up."

Quote of the day.