193-88: PRD's institutions won over AMLO's plazismo

Despite AMLO's highly active mobilization the past weeks against the proposed PRD-PRD alliance in Mexico State, the PRD state council in Edomex voted 193-88 in favor of starting official talks with PAN and other forces - that is, it approved the PRD going in coalition with other parties than the PT and Convergencia in order to try beat PRI in the state's upcoming (July 3, 2010) gubernatorial elections. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor: 193-88, or more than two thirds majority. 


The vote is clearly significant in itself, as a PRD-PAN alliance is pretty much the only chance the left will have to block a new PRI governor in Mexico state from 2011-2017. Last time the party tried, in 2005, AMLO was at the pinnacle of his popularity, yet despite his barnstorming of the state in favor of his candidate Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz, she barely pulled 24 percent, coming in third place behind even PAN -  far behind Enrique Peña Nieto. 


The 2005 election  cast its shadow on yesterday's vote: First, many perredistas are painfully aware a go-it-alone PRD-PT-Convergencia candidate simply will not win. Not a snowball's chance in hell. Moreover, many in the local party structure were highly antagonized by AMLO in 2005, as he imposed his candidate and rode roughshod over the party structure by preferring his Redes Ciudadanas, or extra-party Citizen Networks, rather than the PRD proper. I've heard this expressed on many occasions from key perredistas in the state. This explains the massive 2/3 vote in favor of an alliance candidate, despite AMLO's labeling it as "treason."


Should AMLO follow through on his threats to present his own candidate, the battle is surely lost for the PRD, as well as for AMLO's own candidate -Polevnsky again, or PRD chamber of deputies group leader Alejandro Encinas -  though the inevitable loss of whomever AMLO will convince to run will likely be blamed on the PRD and the "mafia."


Should AMLO be convinced not to postulate Polevnsky or Encinas, a PAN-PRD alliance has a chance, but only with a strong perredista candidate such as Senator Héctor Bautista López. While PAN has been busy building a significant party operation in Mexico State the past years, it is much more palatable for PAN supporters to back a moderate perredista than it is for PRD voters to back a PAN candidate. 


Let the negotiations begin. 

PRD state branch to decide on PAN-PRD elections: Does it really matter?

The PRD of Mexico State are meeting today to decide finally on the possibility of going in alliance with other parties, principally the Partido Acción Nacional, for the 2011 gubernatorial elections in the state. Ahead of the meeitng of the PRD state council, state party president Luis Sánchez Jiménez asked the party's Comisión de Garantías y Vigilancia, or internal watchdog on rules and procedure, to decide on whether the council requires a simple majority or 2/3 majority vote to approve the alliances.


Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, has already declared that regardless of the outcome of the vote, he will reject such an alliance, dismissing in the process the the right of the party branch to decide for itself whether to go in an alliance or not, and that he moreover will ask for a "leave of absence" from the PRD - a term that simply does not exist; one is either a member of the party or one is not. More of consequence, Alejandro Encinas, who had earlier denied that he was seeking the nomination for PRD governor, now says he will only run as head of a PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition. That is, should the PRD state council this weekend decide to launch a common candidate with PAN to seek to defeat PRI and its 81-year grip on power in Mexico State, AMLO will launch his own candidate and that will likely be Encinas. In the process, however, the left might well be destroyed in the the state of Mexico, allowing for a PRI successor to Enrique Peña Nieto, and for Peña Nieto to return PRI to the presidency in 2012. 


As I believe Winston Churchill once observed, there are wars, there are civil wars, and then there are... internal party wars - the latter being the most vicious of all. 

"The disastrous Juan": Salvador García Soto rips Juan Molinar Horcasitas apart

Juan Molinar Horcasitas is decidedly one of the most controversial members of Felipe Calderón's government; the current Secretary of Communications and Transportation has most recently been pummeled for his appointment of the seemingly utterly unqualfied Mony de Swaan as head of COFETEL, the Federal Commission of Telecommunications, and of the granting of media spectrum licenses far below market value to Televisa and Nextel. Yet as commentator Salvador García Soto in El Universal points out, there is much more:

"There are people who should never opt for public service. They neither have a vocation for service nor provide any benefit to society they should serve. One graphic case, judging by this results as a functionary and public servant, is Juan Molinar Horcasitas. His tenure in different public institutions over the past 10 years has left a trail of errors, problems, disasters and inefficiencies that have had high political, social and even economic costs."

Ouch. Yet he is absolutely right: Juan Molinar Horcasitas is a case of a man who was a great academic, yet who has left a trail of destruction in his wake wherever he has gone. The time for his retirement from government "service" is long overdue.

Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez disgusted by gays

Jalisco Governor Emilio González Márquez recently informed us that gay marriages "disgust" him. 
I am not really convinced that the moral credentials of a publicly elected governor who calls on his critics to "go fuck their mothers" warrant that Emilio González Márquez should opine on... well, anything. 

One question for AMLO: Why bother participating?

It's quite circular, actually: PT and AMLO have been promoting various spots or campaign ads recently, and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has ordered some of them to be removed for violating electoral law. Most recently, AMLO and the PT launched another spot with images of former presidents such as Carlos Salinas, current president Felipe Calderón, and others, with the label "mafia" attached to them. IFE ordered it withdrawn for denigrating the presidential office.  AMLO, in turn, argues that this is merely evidence that IFE is controlled by.... you got it, the mafia. In AMLO's words, 

"We all know that the institutions have been undermined, because the serve a mafia of power, not the people."

You might consider it a preemptive strike - label IFE, TEJPJ, the congress, the PRD, whatever, as "mafia" ahead of any adversarial decisions. But it also begs the question: If the dice are so truly loaded against him, if the PAN, PRI, the PRD under Ortega for sure, all the institutions, are either part of the "mafia," are "traitors," or both - why bother participating in the first place?

Sad day for IFE: Federal Electoral Institute disappoints greatly by refusing to deal with church

It's a disgrace: The Mexican Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) voted 7-1 to simply pass on the compliant it received from the PRD regarding the extreme interference by leading members of the Mexican catholic high cleargy, above all the Mexico City Archdiocese spokesman Hugo Valdemar, and Guadalajara cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez, who on many occasions have called on voters not to vote for the PRD, a party they smeared as "fascist." Rather than giving an opinion on the matter, IFE voted to simply pass the case on to the Interior Ministry. Yet by doing so - by refusing to take responsibility on a matter that, given the church blatant violation of the constitution, may have a crucial impact on the 2012 elections - the case is effectively dead: Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora has the entire time been utterly passive and deferent to the church's extremist declarations, refusing to to his job of defending the Mexican Constitution and democracy. 


IFE Coincilor Alfredo Figueroa was a lone voice that spoke up for IFE's autonomy, arguing it shouldn't merely defer to SeGob, or the Interior Ministry

"We can call on the President of the Republic, but not on Sandoval; we can call on different actors, but not on the church....why did we create an autonomous organ for later to abdicate [responsibility]?"

Others like Marco Antonio Baños, who in the end voted for passing on the case to SeGob, nonetheless argued IFE should still take a stance again Sandoval Iñiguez and Hugo Valdemar. Yet the IFE refused to to so. One may consequently expect the most extremist and falangist elements of the Mexican Church to feel emboldened and merely step up their attacks. 
Qué vergüenza.

Broad backlash to Calderón's comments on AMLO. Why did he do it?

Calderón's petty attack on AMLO is receiving quite a backlash from broad swaths of Mexico's political elite. While the ruling PAN at first supported the president's statements, some key PAN cadres such as Senator Santiago Creel and  Manuel Espino, no less - the latter head of PAN during the 2006 electoral debacle - more than implied that Calderón's remarks were unbefitting of a president. Creel dixit: "There are times to compete, and others to coincide and govern" 

Other reactions:

- Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, PRI deputy and president of the Chamber of deputies, said the remarks were "inopportune and unnecessary."

- The key priísta Emilio Gamboa Patrón, head of the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares (CNOP) and a contender for the PRI party presidency, said:

"What Mexico needs is unity and peace, not opening old wellsprings, and Calderón shouldn't return to talk about 2006. I think his statement was very untimely." 

Notably, various IFE councilors berated Calderón, and even the president of IFE's council, Leonardo Valdés, weighed in:

"I cannot share any indications that could cast doubt on the professional activities of the institute [IFE] to organize and aribrate elections"

IFE councilor Francisco Guerrero as well sought to foreshadow implications for 2012:

"We want an election that, although competitive, takes place within the margins of the law, and while the President as a citizen can well offer his point of view, it is important to remember that because of his office he is obligated to create conditions of unity and governability for the country."

Ouch. Given these harsh reactions, which Calderón surely must have foreseen, why did he do it? Only he could answer that question, but it is a quite ominous signal that Calderón, like Fox in 2006, will not stand on the sidelines when it comes to electing his successor as president. Will he similarly intervene against the likely candidates of Ebrard and Peña Nieto in 2012?


For now, a more pertinent worry is likely to be Michoacán, where his sister María Luisa Calderón Hinojosa is very keen on succeeding Leonel Godoy as governor in 2011: Fears exist among the state PRD that Calderón will go to considerate lengths to ensure her victory. To the perredistas, the now-infamous Michoacanazo was merely the first of more political attacks to come.  


On a side note: Chucho Ortega, PRD president, for the nth time used the occasion of Calderón's comments to reiterate there will be no PAN-PRD common presidential candidate in 2012. Ahí está.