PRI anger, part II: PRI will push for impeachment

Francisco Rojas, PRI group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, announced that PRI would push for an initiative that would introduce a reform allowing for the impeachment of the Mexican president:

"The federal government has not tired of showing us that it is capable of anything, rather than to allow our electoral rise, because the spectacle cynically put on by him and his party to harass and try to shown by him and his party, to harass and to try to bring down the PRI, can not and should not be an option that we accept passively."

The PAN, meanwhile, through party leader César Nava declared its full support for the PRD to head the directorate of the Chamber of Deputies the coming legislative period. PRI is reneging on an earlier agreement where the PRD would take over the rotating presidency, yet in an act of vengeance against the PRD is now seeking control of the directorate for itself.

And to this, which on its own can lead to a serious climate of political instability, ungovernability and unconstitutionality, PRI has now added threats of impeachment.

PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State speeds ahead: PRI admits it fears it

Recently, Carlos Hank Rhon, son of the notoriously corrupt Carlos "a politician who is poor is a poor politician" Hank González, in an unusual display of honesty bluntly admitted that PRI fears a PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico state.  Hank also reiterated that the PRI has not yet settled on a candidate to replace Enrique Peña Nieta as governor of the state, but active candidates remain the federal deputies Luis Videgaray and Humberto Benítez Treviño, PRI group leader in the local congress Ernesto Nemer, former governor  César Camacho, and finally, Alfredo del Mazo Maza, who is mayor of the municipality of Huixquilucan, adjacent to the Federal District. The latter is usually regarded as Peña Nieto's anointed one, and as such the most likely PRI candidate.


Key PAN and PRD senators such as Santiago Creel Miranda (likely PAN presidential candidate), Héctor Miguel Bautista López (leader of the important ADN faction of the PRD), Ulises Ramírez Núñez (PAN) and Adriana González Carrillo (PAN) reiterated their willingness to strike yet another alliance against the PRI. 


Within the PRD, Alejandro Encinas, unconditional ally of AMLO yet opposed to the alliances, has also expressed a desire to contend, as has former failed gubernatorial candidate Yeidckol Polevnsky. Yet Senator Héctor Bautista, were he to lead a PRD-PAN coalition, looks a particularly strong candidate with a wider appeal than Encinas and Polevnsky. Bautista is very popular with PRD cadres - like Encinas, but unlike Polevnsky - and his ADN ally Luis Sánchez Jiménez is currently the head of the PRD in Mexico State. 
Expect things to heat up very soon: Elections will be held less than a year from now, on July 3 2011.

PRI confirms its scorched-earth politics by robbing PRD of the Congress directorate

No holds barred: The PRI is angry with PAN and especially the PRD, and increasingly uses every occasion to demonstrate it. (Main reasons: The PRD's success in luring PRI Senator Ángel Aguirre to break with the PRI in Guerrero, as well as the enveloping scandal surrounding the granting of dirt-cheap licenses for Mexico's wireless spectrum to Televisa, undoubtedly for some quid pro quo. More on that later).

Despite the fact that it is now the PRD's turn to preside the mesa ejecutiva, or the directorate or "executive board" of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, PRI declared it will use its majority to impose a priísta to head the directorate when PAN deputy Francisco Javier Ramírez Acuña (PAN) steps down in - or not, if chaos ensues - in September. The PRI then intends to lead the lower house of the Mexican Congress until December 2011, either directly through a PRI president of the directorate or through a federal deputy of the Green Party, which is allied with the PRI and together form a majority in congress. 

Beyond a jab at the PRD, this issue is of great importance to the stability and functioning of congress itself, and for a range of reasons. Most obviously, controlling the directorate of congress means having control of congressional debate - arranging discussion and votes, deciding what type of vote to be held over initiatives, making sure parliamentary rules are followed, and so forth. The Organic Law of Congress, in its most recent revision, states that the three largest parties are to rotate the presidency of the mesa ejecutiva. Putting a Green Party (PVEM) deputy to head it would clearly breech this law, but also would mean reneging on an oral agreement made earlier that PRD would now lead it. 

Crucially, as it is the PRI's turn to preside over the Senate (the outgoing president is PRD's Carlos Navarrete), it would leave PRI in control of both chambers of the Mexican congress - the Senate as well as the Chamber of Deputies.

There are obstacles here, both legal and practical ones. For one, while PRI and PVEM have a majority that they intend to use to justify their control of the congress directorate, they will still need 2/3 majority, or the support of other parties. This would then turn into a test of "loyalties," so to speak, of the PRD-PAN alliances, which were principally electoral and not legislative in nature. Will the PAN stick with the PRD and block a 2/3 vote, or will it vote with the PRI in exchange for a political favor? 

Another obstacle: In addition to the mesa ejecutiva, another crucial organ is the Junta de Coordinación Política, which first and foremost sets the actual agenda of what Congress is to discuss in the first place - and it is the only organ that has this power. (The Junta also has the power to shape the legislation itself, redrafting proposals directly, or indirectly through the individuals it places to head parliamentary committees, another key function). The Junta is set to be lead by PAN, and while some initial reports suggested that PAN might be willing to leave the PRD with presiding this organ, this deal apparently fell through. 

Moreover, had the PRD taken over the Junta, it might also have caused quite a bit of internal tension in the PRD: While Jesús Zambrano, a key member of the Nueva Izquierda faction in the PRD, would have been the new president of the Mesa ejecutiva, Alejandro Encinas, an inconditional AMLO ally, as coordinator of the PRD parliamentary group would have headed the Junta (it is made up of all the parliamentary party group leaders). The pro and anti-AMLO factions in the PRD's parliamentary group had, as such, different agendas.

Should the PRI somehow manage to win control over the mesa while PAN heads the Junta, it would leave the PRD completely out of having key agenda-setting powers, and also greatly reduce its powers to introduce or shape legislation. Yet there is more to it than a mere slight to the PRD: No party is allowed to preside over both these organs simultaneously. Given the sequence of rotations, should the PRI follow through on its threat to preside the mesa, it would mean that down the road PRD would be scheduled technically to head both the junta and the mesa, which is unconstitutional. 

Yet for now, the PRI doesn't seem too concerned about these scenarios of ungovernability or unconstitutionality. Let's hope cooler heads in the party prevail. 

IFE and TEPJ at loggerheads over a crucial issue: What is illegal propaganda vs. what is an "interview"?

The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) is well aware that something needs to be done to avoid a "perfect storm" ahead of 2012. Specifically, IFE is calling for a new electoral reform to decide, once and for all, what amounts to freely exercising journalism and the free flow of information through interviews with candidates, and what amounts to outright abuse of this mechanism, where "interviews" are merely thinly disguised propaganda for a candidate. The obvious case of Enrique Peña Nieto stands out here: The Mexico State governor continues to flaunt electoral laws such as the prohibition of propaganda by public officials by agreeing to a plethora of "interviews" that only serve to boast of his supposed achievements and drum up support for the  PRI. Yet many of the members of IFE's general council do not agree with TEPJF's recent decision on where to draw the line. 


(This is related to, but not identical, to the recent clampdown on president Felipe Calderón by the TEPJF, where the federal electoral tribunal deemed Calderón to have broken electoral as well as constitutional law by his "announcements" ahead of recent electoral contests).


Put simply, the TEPJF declared that a PAN candidate in Tabasco and his party, as well as the radio station, should be sanctioned for breaking electoral law, as the candidate held a total of nine interviews with the radio station. This was found to be excessive, and as a result both TEPJF and the radio station will be sanctioned in one way or another. 


But clearly we have many competing ideals here, as IFE is well aware of. 
- To what degree do interviews (radio, tv, newspapers, etc) extend to electoral propaganda?
- What is the difference between performing a public service - the free flow of information - and doing propaganda for a candidate?
- Is there a maximum limits for interviews? (nine? eight? five?)
- Should journalists, already under enormous pressures in Mexico, also work under the threat of possibly being sanctioned while merely doing their job of informing?


The burden here clearly falls on the IFE to draw the line, and the electoral institute is not all too happy of this enormous extension of its sphere of operation that the TEPJF's decision in practice entails for the IFE. 


To recall, the 2007-2008 reform set strict limits on political campaigning, such as granting parties a set amount of time/resources for electoral propaganda, yet banning the parties (and, to be sure, other actors such as business, NGSOs, the church, etc) from paying for further political advertising. 

Yet where does one draw the line between what is carrying out the crucial duty of political reporting, versus actively campaigning for a party through phony/paid "interviews"?
There is hardly an easy answer, but it is in my view of utmost importance that this line is clearly drawn ahead of 2012.


And may I also add: Mexico's neighbor to the north could very well use a revamping of its own electoral and media laws: Should Fox "News" really be allowed to operate as such when it  is not only acting as a propaganda arm for the Republican party and the nativist fringe "Tea Party" organizations,  but its owners even donate money to the party it is supposed to cover objectively as a news organization?

Senator Gustavo Madero as PAN party president would signal continuity

Gustavo Madero, head of PAN's senate group, announced he would leave his current position in order to compete for the presidency of PAN, given that César Nava will not run for reeelection.

Madero is a very strong candidate for the position, and given his earlier support for the PAN-PRD alliances, his eventual party presidency will signal continuity.

PAN wisely chooses their presidency by a majority vote of its National Council, avoiding - as has happened on every single occasion - acrimonious and devastating mass elections by the party base membership, such as the case of the PRD.

On the subject of money laundering: When will the United States do its part?

Calderón's belated initiative to counter money laundering through limitations on cash limits is laudable, but again, the key may lie on the U.S. side, where most of the money is being made in the first place. 

As Martin Woods, formerly of Wachovia, put it: "“If you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point."
Woods is referrring to anks like Wachovia, for which he headed a anti-money-laundering unit 2006-2009, but quit in disgust when it became clear that his bosses didn't like what he found: That drug gangs were using the bank to funnel billions to Mexico. 

Why not indict the bastards? That's the tricky part: According to an excellent investigation by Bloomberg a few weeks back,

"No big U.S. bank... has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act or any other federal law. Instead, the Justice Department settles criminal charges by using deferred-prosecution agreements, in which a bank pays a fine and promises not to break the law again.‘No Capacity to Regulate’Large banks are protected from indictments by a variant of the too-big-to-fail theory.Indicting a big bank could trigger a mad dash by investors to dump shares and cause panic in financial markets, says Jack Blum, a U.S. Senate investigator for 14 years and a consultant to international banks and brokerage firms on money laundering."

The United States, then, in addition to being responsible for much of the drug consumption that fuels Mexico's "drug war," and of putting in place very few obstacles to selling the assault rifles and guns used to kill Mexican police, civilians, and drug rivals, for fear out of financial panic blocks a full indictment of the criminal wrongdoings of big banks such as Wachovia, meekly asking them pay merely a small fine and to promise not to do it again...

It has often been noted that the key to win Mexico's "drug war" is found in the United States and its policies, and the absurd banking laws of the latter country only throws more fuel on that argument.

Calderón's money laundering initiative could be hugely important, but why now?

President Felipe Calderón's recent initiative to counter money laundering, which includes a ban on using cash for real estate transaction or  spending more than 100,000 pesos in other transactions, if passed, may be hugely important. Given the support of both governor Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI and Mexico City chief of government Marcelo Ebrard of the PRD, it does stand a great chance of being made into law by congress.

Yet I cannot help but wonder: Why on earth did it take Calderón more than three years to come up with this initiative? Anyone who has lived or visited Mexico will know that cash remains king; indeed, according to Washington Post, 3/4 of all commercial transactions are done with cash in Mexico, compared with only 20 percent in the United States. As such, as measures to counter money-smuggling from the United States to Mexico are of little value - the WP article expands on the  subject of money smuggling, and  reports that only about an estimated 1 percent of southbound cash is actually detected -  this may be one of the most important legislative initiatives taken in Calderón's "war on drugs."

Yet why so long in coming? Put differently, what interests have been blocking this fairly obvious initiative for such a long time? PRD senators Tomás Torres and Minerva Hernández, while supporting the initiative, pointedly noted that one similarly important money laundering initiate has long been in the works in the senate, but that PRI blocked it in the last minute. Why? One is entitled to one's own conclusions.