Sunday, July 3, 2011

Nayarit elections: Can PRI be beat?

Here's a nice graphic from Milenio regarding the Nayarit elections. What is being elected: Governor, 30 local deputies, and 20 municipal heads. The 2011 results should be out later today at the home page of the Nayarit Electoral Insittute, IEEN. 


And another interesting graphic, on what 2012 hopefuls have visited what states. AMLO leads Nayarit - four visits - despite not backing his party's candidate, Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, but a PT/Convergencia candidate with absolute no chance of winning the election:


Narcopolitics: The case of Hidalgo

In yesterday's El Universal, former gubernatorial candidate Xóchitl Gálvez revealed that the narcos offered to support her campaign with 50 million pesos, an offered she refused, but didn't report out of fear for her family.

Today Hidalgo is having another election - this time for head of the state's 84 municipalities - and Los Zetas are arguably backing candidates in particularly the Huasteca region, a Zeta stronghold.

Thanks to a 2009 electoral reform that aimed at streamlining the state elections - elections for governors at the same time as municipal elections  - the new municipal heads will serve five and a half years.

Quite a prize.

The cost of every single vote in Mexico State? About 60 dollars

This is a quite stunning fact: According to Coparmex, a rough estimated cost of each vote in Mexico State today - including organizing the elections, party funding, etc - will be a whopping $60 - U.S. dollars, that is.

Total cost of the election: 3.6 billion Mexican pesos.

That's about a 100 percent increase from the last elections in 2005. And irony of ironies: The electoral code was modified in 2008 with the explicit purpose of reducing the cost of elections.

Keep in mind that this figure does not include any extra-official - illegal - resources spent on the election. The PRD and PAN have accused and denounced PRI of showering state money on their candidate, and surpassing any legal spending limit.

Electoral Tribunal orders Ministry of Interior to sanction Hugo Valdemar

Mexico's electoral tribunal, Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF), ordered Mexico's interior ministry to stop dragging its feet and to sanction the Mexican Archdiocese and its venal spokesperson Hugo Valdemar, for violating Mexican law by calling on Mexicans note to vote for the PRD.

The case has been thrown back and forth between IFE and the Ministry, so one should perhaps not hold one's breath for a decision any time soon, but the TEPJF order is nonetheless a direct one.

Of note as well: TEPJF ruled as well that the responsible is not merely Valdemar, but also the Archdiocese, given that he has uttered his many anti-PRD opinions on church ground, and as a representative of the church.