Mexico State: Poll numbers give PRI near majority

From Milenio:

As this graphic suggests, the PRI's commanding lead in Mexico State is unlikely to be surpassed: Eruviel Ávila is ahead with nearly 48 percent of the vote, close to a clean full majority. Combined, the PRD and PAN candidates barely scrape in at 30 percent, though it is impossible to assess whether this would have been their combined total if a coalition would have been achieved, or, with a nod to Gestalt theory, the sum would have been greater than the individual parts. 

AMLO's use of language

AMLO is heading out on a -yet another - tour of Mexico's municipalities. He is, as far I can tell, the only person in history to have achieved visiting every single one of Mexico's municipalities, as well as the indigenous usus y costumbres. In this regard, it is quite noteworthy the kind of language he is increasingly using:

"We will make an assessment of how this movement is built from the bottom up with the participation of many citizens, women and free men, who are conscious and of good will, working every day to achieve the transformation. It is so that everyone must do our part to save Mexico together, we are moving forward, we are right, we are going for the rebirth of Mexico, this is the challenge and we are going to achieve it."

The costs of militarization: In Guerrero, president of Congress abused by army

I've driven through many military checkpoints in Guerrero state and been pulled over by a couple, but thankfully never experienced this: Faustino Soto Ramos, until recently a federal deputy and now president of the state congress of Guerrero, says soldiers abused him verbally, fired their weapons in the ground to scare him, and hit him a few times, in front of his own vehicle. As the legislator noted,

"If the president of the Congress is treated like this, imagine ordinary citizens."

Emilio González Márquez well on his way to bankrupt Jalisco

The drunkard and foul-mouthed governor of Jalisco, Emilio González Márquez, is well on his way to bankrupting  the state of Jalisco. According to Milenio, which cites a report to the state congress, the state's debt has quadrupled to nearly 15 billion pesos - all in barely four years of "governing" the state.

I'll let the article speak for itself:

"The growth in liabilities of the state has not come solely from the procurement of new loans, but also for renegotiations of debts inherited by the governor, where he has favored the payment of interest, which means a growing burden on the state's finances, currently amounting to 1.9 billion pesos annually. To that amount must be added the 1.5 billion pesos more authorized by the congress for security purposes, and, the case it will be authorized, 5.612 billion more pesos which the governor has asked for, for various projects"

I do not think the end of González Márquez' government will be a happy one.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari on democracy. After this, irony is dead.

This may not be news, but I've certainly not seen Carlos Salinas writing a column for El Universal before. Under the title, "The Eruption of the Citizen Alternative," Salinas - a crook, a repressor, an ultra-corrupt megalomaniac - opines, in his usual long-winded prose (his last book clocks in at almost 1000 pages) on seemingly everything under the sun, from the North Africa uprisings to Aristotelian republicanism.

Yet the height of cynicism is truly reached when he warns against "speculative capital", and lauds "participatory citizenship."

This is the man whose economic policies - micromanaged by him, top down, including the exclusion of congress from virtually any say during the NAFTA negotiations -  led to an armed rebellion by the EZLN, and whose no-holds-barred opening up of Mexico to speculative capital on terms more liberal than even Pinochet's Chile would lead to an economic disaster just weeks after leaving office.
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And now Salinas wants to lecture Mexicans on the virtues of republicanism?
After this, irony is truly dead.

Stratfor: Mexican legislators are not amused

Texas-based Stratfor - those of the stratospherically priced intelligence analyses, which unfortunately at times decidedly cross the line of the sublime to the utterly ridiculous - published online its most recent "Mexican Drug War Update."

Not quite willing to dole out the required dough for this quarterly report, I have yet to read it, but from secondary sources it appears to suggest that Mexican President Felipe Calderón is going soft on the Sinaloa cartel and El Chapo in order for them to liquidate their comparatively more vicious competitors.

Yet Calderón's defenders have marched to the barricades, and they are not who you might think: According to La Jornada, PRD and PT legislators essentially dismiss the idea that the government is engaging in "pacting" of any kind with the narcos; rather, the difficulties of getting to Chapo is rather a reflection of not only the cartel's superior organization and intelligence, but crucially also the significant social support Chapo allegedly has built up.

Felipe González, PAN senator, moreover claims that Stratfor has erred in the past, such as its claim that most of the weapons showing up with the drug gangs in Mexico come from Central America and not from the United States - an assessment, to be sure, very few analysts share.

Gonzáles also dryly adds that Strafor as well "charges a lot."


Ouch. 

If you love Mexico, you can't vote for PAN?

"No one who loves Mexico can ally with or vote for the party of war, PAN."

This rather stunning slogan comes from AMLO's Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), in a sharp attack on Calderón and PAN. All gloves have apparently come off, and there seem to remain no holds barred in AMLO's campaign for 2012, well under way: The most recent video, featured on the home page of AMLO's movement, makes the further claim that Calderón launched the military offensive against the drug gangs in order to legitimize his government, following the contested 2006 election, but also to to "the dirty work" for United States.

I am hard pressed to imagine how one can get any dirtier than this, which is moreover sadly ironic given that one of AMLO's main arguments in 2006 was the very dirty campaign from PAN: The pupil has now seemingly overcome the master.

In essence: If you vote for my opponent (or ally with them), you don't love your country.
How to top this?