Fox calls for PRI vote

Former President Vicente Fox' sympathy for Enrique Peña Nieto has long been an open secret, which of course makes it no secret at all. Yet I don´t think we've seen it quite this blunt: Fox now openly calls for a vote for the PRI candidate. That's right: Fox calls for a PRI vote in 2012.

This is quite amazing -Fox was a president elected on the the PAN ticket, and the first non-PRI president in 71 years. He is now, one month before the elections, stabbing his own party in the back in the most open of manners. 

I can't but help that this will only be an advantage to AMLO, who has long argued that PRI and PAN, or "PRIAN," are essentially the same. 

What better evidence could one possibly point to than Fox calling for a vote for the PRI?

Update: Key panistas such as Ernesto Cordero are calling for Fox to be kicked out of PAN. PAN president Gustavo Madero also calls on Fox to simply shut up. Now that'll be the day. 

Source: 

Llama Fox a cerrar filas en torno al candidato puntero. Milenio online, June 3, 2012. 
Líderes panistas exigen la expulsión de Vicente Fox. El Universal, June 5, 2012. 
Madero exige a Fox no traicionar a la democracia.  El Universal, June 5, 2012. 

PAN could lose bastion Guanajuato

It is still unlikely, but increasingly less so: PRI is getting within reach of beating PAN in its bastion of Guanajuato, run by the most socially regressive sectors of the party particularly linked to the secret catholic society El Yunque.

PRI candidate Juan Ignacio Torres reportedly pulls 42.2 percent against PAN Miguel Márquez' 50.3. The left has only a marginal presence in the ultra-conservative state, and is in addition running three candidates.

Source:

Guanajuato: aceptan ventaja de panista. El Universal, May 30, 2012.

Reforma shock poll: AMLO only 7 points behind

With apologies for the "shock" usage here, but I don't really know what else to call this:

Reforma newspaper, a center-right leaning newspaper with a remarkably well developed polling team, has AMLO at 34, against 38 of Enrique Peña Nieto. 

Only four points away! The poll reflects a growth of 7 percent for AMLO from the last Reforma poll, taken April 19-22. The most recent poll was taken May 24-27. Other polls on the ADN "poll of polls" also show AMLO rising and EPN diving. 

Source:

Encuesta Reforma: López Obrador a 4 puntos de Peña. ADN Polìtico, May 31, 2012.

Credit where due: Church warns against global warming

Few non-catholics have a higher opinion of Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera than I, and I regard him a generally venomous, misogynistic, gay-bating, child-rapist protecting bigot.

Yet in the most recent Desde la Fe, the publication of his archdiocese of Mexico City, Rivera, in addition to the usual trite admonitions to fight poverty from an ultra-conservative institution, warned against the effects of man-made global warming, noting that the negative fallout of rising temperatures - above all natural disasters - tend to strike particularly the poorest of the poorest far harder than the rest of the population.

Credit where credit's due, cardinal.

Source: 

Urge clero a combatir la pobreza. El Universal, May 28, 2012.

Why "mafia" is a far better term than "cartel"

One recent example why the drug gangs, cartels, etc should simply be referred to as "mafia":

In Michoacán, three storage places of the Sabritas company, which makes potato chips, were burned down in three different places in the state. One does not need much imagination to see this as a case where "protection money" was likely not paid, or was deemed insufficient - one of the oldest mafia practices in the book, far predating the advent of drug trafficking. Hence, "mafia," not "drug cartels."

Source:

Se incendian tres bodegas de Sabritas en Michoacán. El Universal, May 27, 2012.

Intellectuals with Peña Nieto

Interesting array of intellectuals and other leaders who appear to have lined up with Enrique Peña Nieto, judging by those attending an even/-lauding his "responses" to 37 "questions" they had written to the PRI presidential candidate

* Fernando Gómez Mont, former Interior Secretary who resigned from his post and then his party in protest over the 2010 PAN-PRD alliances
* Héctor Aguilar Camín, historian and Televisa personality
* Cecilia Soto, former presidential candidate for PT
* Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, historian
* Alejandro Martí, businessman and anti-kidnapping movement leader
* Ángeles Mastretta, writer

It is perhaps more notable how very few of Mexico's writers and intellectuals, organic or otherwise, have lined up with the PRI candidate.

Source:

Peña presenta decálogo por "presidencia democrática. El Universal, May 22, 2012.

Priísta defiende su formación demócrata. El Universal, May 22, 2012.

PRI, Peña Nieto and Yarrington in 1 minute

While PRI and Peña Nieto run feverishly to distance themselves from Tomas Yarrington, governor of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2004 and accused of laundering money for the Gulf and/or Zeta mafia, pictures do speak a thousands word, such as the inconvenient photo of Enrique Peña Nieto with the disgraced governor  (h/t Tim Johnson), pasted below.

Sendero De Fecal

Here is also a 1-minute YouTube video expanding on the Peña Nieto-Yarrington-PRI relationship that is well worth your time, where the PRI's 2012 candidate defends Yarrington of the accusations - before it all blew up a day or two ago, that is: Peña Nieto defiende a Yarrington.

(On another note: I just came back from a panel at the 2012 LASA conference in San Francisco, where John Ackerman suggested that Peña Nieto is the preferred candidate of the U.S. government. How ironic that the State Department, through its spokesperson Victoria Nuland, yesterday came out denying it had any intention to interfere in the election - but against EPN).

Sources:

Yarrington denies drug bribe claims. The Brownsville Herald, May 23, 2012.

EU: Yarrington recibió sobornos del narcotráfico. El Universal, May 23, 2012.

Narco soborna en Tamaulipas desde 1998: EU. El Universal, May 23, 2012

Washington: no buscamos influir en elección. El Universal, May 24, 2012
El partido no solapa impunidad, dice PRI. El Universal, May 24, 2012

JVM y Peña chocan por caso Yarrington. El Universal, May 24, 2012