Fox, no longer with PAN

Many in the PAN would like to kick Vicente Fox out of the party, above all given his increasingly public embrace of then-PRI candidate and now president Enrique Peña Nieto. Yet Fox might beat them to it: The former president (2000-6) said he won't renew his party membership, in protest over those who have "appropriated" the party - a not-too-veiled reference to ex-president Felipe Calderón.

Not that Fox was ever very close to the PAN - even though he was a federal deputy for the party already back in 1988 and won the presidency on the PAN label in 2000, he pretty much ignored the party when in government, an amazingly stupid approach given his infamous inability to get anything done as president.

That Fox will simply cease to be a member is also convenient for the party itself, as it will avoid the messy spectacle of a protracted expulsion process. Fox, for his part, will go down in history as the candidate who kicked the PRI out of national power, but then helped it get back in again in 2012. And not very much more.

Source:

Fox duda seguir en el PAN. El Universal, Nov. 26, 2012

PRD's Alejandro Encinas: Political cowerdice

Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez is co-founder of the PRD, and a very important person within the party. Over the past years he's threatened to leave the party a few times, all with regards to the internal dispute within the party over its resistance to Andrés Manuel López Obrador's attempt to make the PRD a completely servile party at his full service, its only purpose to exist being to bring AMLO to the Mexican presidency. Encinas was a very moderate center-left politician, who did a pretty good job holding a few different secretaries in Mexico City, and twice was interim mayor when AMLO was first impeached and when he then stepped down to pursue the presidency. But since then, Encinas has lost very much credibility as he appeared increasingly subordinated to whatever commands AMLO issued to him.

Now, with AMLO actively recruiting PRD members to join his new personal party Morena, Encinas is again in the spotlight as a possible defector from the PRD. Ex-party president Jesús Ortega, who won leadership of the party in 2008 against the AMLO-backed Encinas, called Encinas out recently: Either you go with Morena, or you stay in the PRD, but make up your mind.

Encinas' response is truly embarrassing: He will wait making he decision, and base it on whether Morena really manages to convert itself into a party (officially register with the federal electoral institute, that is). In other words, Encinas is taking no chances - he will enjoy the fat privileges of being a senator for the PRD, but is not loyal to the party and might leave it - but only if he is assured he has a new party ready for him. Say whatever you want about Martí Batres, a hard-left authoritarian unreconstructed stalinist who recently ditched the PRD, but did so in order to build AMLO's new Morena - as opposed to merely waiting for the new party to be ready - the table set, and then show up - like Encinas. This is nothing less than political cowardice.

Source:
Líderes perredistas descartan ir a Morena. El Universal, Nov. 27, 2012

Mario Vargas Llosa meets with new Mexico City mayor

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa met yesterday with Miguel Mancera, where he pronounced that Mexico needs a "modern left."

Not only is Vargas Llosa hardly a man of the left himself - he's a classic liberal, in the Latin American sense of the word (nothing to do with the U.S. use of the term, and far more economically liberal than European liberals) - and lest we forget, just a few weeks ago, he snubbed Mexico's president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto when the latter was on a visit to Spain.

But to the incoming mayor of Mexico City, he did find the time.

Source:
Se necesita izquierda moderna: Vargas Llosa. El Universal, Nov. 26, 2012

Mexico GDP growth, 1988-2012

Let the graphic below from Reforma (h/t gerardoesquivel.blogspot.com) pronounce the verdict on 12 years of PAN rule:

AMLO's party is born

AMLO finally has his own party: Yesterday, his Morena movement held its constituent assembly to become a political party. 1676 delegates gathered to elected 204 of its 300 national councilors, and "voted" by a raising of the hands (!) AMLO to be president of the party council. So much for a democratic voto secreto y libre! Delegates also approved its statutes and declaration of principles of the new party.

They will next vote to choose a party president, which will be a meaningless position given that AMLO will in any case exercise full control of his own, custom-made, personalized, personalistic, patrimonial party. One likely candidate is the disgraced Martí Batres Guadarrama, who just one day earlier finally left the PRD. He will not be missed by any proponent of the PRD as a serious, modern, democratic left party: Batres represented its worst authoritarian hard-left nationalistic thugishness. His departure is the PRD's gain.

In the long run, so I believe, is AMLO's.

From Milenio.com

UPDATE: Batres it is.

Picture from Milenio.com

Source:
AMLO: con Morena, el reinicio. El Universal, Nov. 20, 2012
Deja Martí Batres al PRD por Morena. Milenio.com. Nov. 18, 2012


Eligen a Martí Batres presidente de Morena. Milenio.com. Nov. 20. 2012

OECD to Mexico: Kick teacher union from education secretariat

Gabriela Ramos,directors of the secretary general's office at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), had pretty choice words on Mexico's teacher union SNTE for Mexico's new incoming PRI government:

The union needs to to what obviously all unions do in the countries that have made progress in their education system: to ensure that teachers have the best working conditions, better training, and then leave to authorities the decisions on how to make assessments, performance awards, recruitment of teachers and principals, as well as allocation of positions

Amen. In Mexico, the SNTE and its notorious mafia-like president-for-life Elba Esther Gordillo is the proverbial fox guarding the hen house, taking for itself the liberty to do the tasks Ramos mentions, and doing them extremely poorly.

Will Enrique Peña Nieto do what Carlos Salinas did in 1989, namely to remove a vastly corrupt SNTE head,J oaquín Hernández Galicia, in order to gain some credibility as a reformer?

If so, let's hope the analogy will not be complete: The replacement for "La Quina" turned out to be...  Elba Esther Gordillo.

Source:
Sugiere la OCDE marginar a SNTE de directriz educativa. El Universal, Nov. 15, 2012.

AMLO's parody of a party to be launched Nov. 19-20

The Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional or Morena, the personal, customized, made-to-fit party of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and stuffed with his relatives, hardcore supporters, and a good bunch of opportunists, will be officially launched in a national assembly on Nov. 19-20.

This will be a parody of a party: It is a tool created solely for one purpose, which is for AMLO to run for a third time for the Mexican presidency. It has been created in an absolute hurry - in just a few weeks, scores of state and district "assemblies" have been held where local leaderships have been largely hand-picked by AMLO and his family.

Like the Green Party, the PT, the Convergencia/Mocimiento Ciudadano, PANAL, and other small franchise-parties, Morena is just an extended family enterprise, in this case of AMLO. It exists only for him and his interests - not, for example, to promote a legislative agenda, engage in reform of Mexico's laws, train future legislators, etc. No, this parody of a party has been cobbled, hurled together in an absolute hurry, and is held together only as long as AMLO has absolute control of it. Already many of its "assemblies" have degenerated into shouting matches and fights between different groups that claim to be the real and most loyal of AMLO's supporters.

A party that is held together only by loyalty to one man is very brittle, and is far more likely to descend into internal chaos than one held together by a lasting, common programmatic and ideological agenda. So far there is no indication that the new Morena, in its coming national assembly, will be anything but "AMLO's party," and it will rise, and fall, with him.

Source:
AMLO convoca a asamblea nacional. El Universal, Nov. 9, 2012