Sunday, August 15, 2010

Marcelo Ebrard (re) launches his own party current

Milenio and La Jornada report on the launching of a "new" internal party current of the PRD, namely the Izquierda Renovadora en Movimiento. Their short-term memory fails them a tad here; led by Mexico City Secretary of Civil Protection Elías Miguel Moreno Brizuela, this is simply a relaunch of what was until recently called Izquierda en Movimiento, mimicking Ebrard's slogan for Mexico City, "Ciudad en Movimiento," which has been around since at least 2007 - it was launched officially during the PRD's 10th conference - and has periodically resurfaced with declarations that its main purpose is not promoting Ebrard's candidacy for 2012, which of course it always was and so remains. And just like Moreno Brizuela predicted in 2007 that the corriente would dethrone Nueva Izquierda as the principal party faction within the PRD, this new formation has similar pretensions, claiming that it already is the third largest within the PRD. 


This "new" corriente, or official party faction, attracted key perredistas such as Martha Dalia Gastélum, formerly of Foro Nuevo Sol (another corriente squarely behind Ebrard, though Gastélum left it - or, alternatively, was kicked out, according to her FNS detractors) in order to back Ortega for PRD president over Encinas in 2008), José Antonio Rueda, formerly of Red Izquierda Revolucionaria (REDIR), and notably Horacio Duarte, who wants to be PRD's gubernatorial candidate in Mexico State in 2011. I've read earlier reports that Duarte's GAP faction of the PRD has already lined up behind AMLO's candidacy, which I found dubious. Rather, Duarte's presence may seem as a backing for Ebrard, in return for Ebrard backing Duarte's gubernatorial bid. 

More responses to Castro's declarations - and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo makes a fool out of himself

While the content of Castro's recent declarations are on their own dramatic - they confirm AMLO and PRD's old  claim of a conspiracy in 2004 to destroy his standing among the electorate, hatched by leading politicians of PRI-PAN and the Attorney General of the Republic - PRD secretary general Hortensia Aragón notes the obvious, in that Castro's declarations:
"Unfortunately it is a belated declaration; it was delayed a bit in his memoirs and only serve to ratify what we knew from the beginning: Yes, they constructed a path to derail the candidacy of Andrés Manuel.”
As noted earlier, PRD's relationship with Castro is far from harmonious, for a range of reasons, yet a key one, as PRD Federal Deputy Jesús Zambrano also pointed out, was Castro's betrayal of the Mexican Left in 1988 when he immediately accepted the results of the 1988 elections that brought to power Carlos Salinas, validating what was an obvious fraud. 


Others are more concerned with responding to the Mexican Foreign Secretariat's sharp reply to Castro's revelations, which decided the best response would be to go on the attack, dismissing the substance of his comments outright and going on the offensive by attacking the right to a free vote in Cuba. 

PRD Senator Arturo Núñez calls the SRE's response "grotesque, ridiculous, and childish," rightly pointing out that SRE refused to deal with the contents of the comments. 



PT Federal Deputy Porfiro Muñoz Ledo -  a político saltimbanqui if there ever was one - noted that the foreign secretariat's declarations broke with its historic diplomacy to Cuba, not only by conflating Castro with the Cuban government, but also by interfering in Cuban internal affairs, observations that have elements of truth. Yet Muñoz Ledo, seemingly eager to build on the AMLO-Castro connection, amazingly states that the secretariat "cannot walk around with bravado" and claim there are no free elections in Cuba.

Really, Muñoz Ledo? This is the level of analysis to be expected from a man who has held virtually any high office in Mexico apart from the Presidency?