Peña Nieto faking Twitter followers

Fascinating article from Milenio on PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto: While leading the pack with seemingly more than 400,000 followers on twitter, an investigation carried out by the newspaper on just a sample of those found that many of these are simply bots, or "ghost accounts" = fake followers.

Perhaps I am mistaking wishful thinking for analysis, but Peña Nieto's presidential project seems ever more shallow the more light shines on it.

Here's a graphic where the official number of followers are displayed. How many are fakes?

From Milenio

How can this be legal? Guanajuato and the pope

According to the political gossip column in Milenio: 

Guanajuato's government paid 2 000 800 pesos for each of the nearly 220 rooms reserved so that officials and friends of Governor Juan Manuel Oliva can sleep in luxurious hotels located on avenida López Mateos, and from there observe the route that Pope Benedict XVI will carry out in the city of  León March.

Bátiz would head PGR, Mondragón SSP

Two more "cabinet announcements" for AMLO should he win the presidency:
- Bernardo Bátiz, his ex-attorney general in Mexico City, would head the national PGR to be Attorney General of Mexico (the position Marisela Morales now holds)
- Manuel Mondragón, current head of police in Mexico City, would head the federal SSP,  Secretariat of Public Security (the position Genaro García Luna now holds)

Also, notably, AMLO in Nuevo León said some businessmen apologized for their role in the 2006 "dirty campaign" where business sectors sponsored illegal campaign ads against him.

Alejandro Solalinde, remarkable priest

If there's a devil, he might very well live on Mexico's southern border, which for so many Central American immigrants is a hellish nightmare of kidnappings, torture, rape, and murder.

One man who fights the cause of immigrants and defends human rights in general: The remarkable Alejandro Solalinde Guerra.

Here's a fun interview. Excerpts:

Q: Who do you fear more: the drug dealers or politicians?
- The two together, because sometimes there is no difference between them.

...Well, the Pope is only a servant of servants.
Q: By the way, why is he coming?
- It is very curious that he is going exactly to a PAN stronghold. But I will not assume anything.

Clouthier on Vázquez Mota: Quote

Manuel Clouthier said he would not seek a PAN senate seat from Sinaloa given differences with the national PAN leadership.

Then, he noted of Josefina Vázquez Mota that he knows "what she is made of" given that he was her colleague for two years in the Chamber of Deputies:

"she has an extraordinary ability to deceive people"

Ouch.

Mexico informal economy from 10 to 14 million under PAN

In 2000, an estimated 10 million people worked in Mexico's informal sector. In 2012, the number has risen to 14 million, according to the state statistics institute INEGI.

Almost one out three (29.2 percent) of the working population is now found in the informal sectors.

That means they get little if any medical coverage, and when they are too old to work, they will have little if any pension or social security income from the state.

These are damning figures of the 12 years in power of the PAN governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón.

Here's a graphic, from Milenio:

Milenio

Graco, who introduced AMLO to Cárdenas, governor candidate

Senator Graco Ramírez (PRD), the man who in 1988 introduced AMLO to Cárdenas (when the latter sought to recruit him to run as opposition candidate to PRI as governor of Tabasco), will himself finally be the candidate of the left to be governor of Morelos, it was announced yesterday

Ramírez stands a pretty good chance, both thanks to the relative strength of the PRD apparatus there, and due to his own popularity within Morelos. Suerte.

Update: Interview here