Peña Nieto and the church

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto recently declared that his government and the (catholic) church has “common objectives.” That is putting it mildly. For years Peña Nieto has shamelessly courted the support of the religious right, jumping on its most regressive of social positions. I say shamelessly not principally due to the utter incongruence with the PRI’s historic secularism and reticence toward mixing religion and politics (though much of this did, to be sure, come to an end during the government of Carlos Salinas), but his breaching of electoral law to announce his love for the church. The most infamous that comes to mind is Peña Nieto's trip to the Vatican, duly covered by Televisa, where he "presented" to the pope his new wife-to-be, Angélica Rivera, and where functionaries of Mexico State lined up to get the pope´s blessing.  

Expect more expressions of love from Peña Nieto's faction of PRI to the church in the months to come. 

(His first wife died under what still appear to be rather unclear circumstances. Without exaggerating this point, it is worth having a look at this video clip, where he can´t seem to recall her exact cause of death).

AMLO and Cárdenas - reconciliation after all of these years?

AMLO, on tour in Michocán to promote his book and, inevitably, his 2012 candidacy, notably praised the Cárdenas clan, from Lázaro to Cuauhtémoc to Lazaro junior. This is interesting given the acrimonious relations between AMLO and CC the past decade, when AMLO as Mexico City mayor eclipsed CC as the most important figure within the PRD. Things got particularly bad, to recall, during the 2006 elections, when CC did not campaign for AMLO (he had for the longest contested his nomination as PRD´s presidential candidate, which would have been his fourth try), and refused to even saythat he voted for him. Moreover, CC as quickly recognized the victory of Felipe Calderón in 2006. This left much bitterness within the AMLO camp. I remember interviewing 6-7 of AMLO´s "secretaries" of his "legitimate government," and "traitor" was a common characterization. 


Yet the AMLO-CC spat was more a clash of egos rather than any programmatic differences; AMLO, for one, was recruited by CC in the fall of 1988- many andresmanuelistas tend to forget that AMLO was not with CC in the fateful 1988 election, remaining loyal to PRI until CC recruited him to finally bail PRI and join the Frente Democrático Nacional for the Tabasco state elections - and their trajectories mirror each other highly. CC, to recall, was highly anti-institutional, refused to declare himself ideologically in terms of left and right, was highly skeptical of institutional reform, such as the crucial 1995-6 electoral reforms - yet while he eventually moderated, AMLO kept up this discourse until this day. 


But back to the point of this news article: Given that both AMLO and CC heavily criticized the highly successful PAN-PRD state alliances, they appear to recall their common ground, particularly as it may include a PRD presidency for CC´s son Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, former governor of Michoacán, or other positions. Both, to be sure,  are highly critical of the leadership of Jesús Ortega of PRD.
It will be very interesting to see where Michocán Governor Leonel Godoy will stand. He is much closer to the Ortega camp ideologically and in terms of political trajectory, but owes much to both AMLO and CC. Much remains to be decided. 

Some more good news from Guanajuato: Investigation of ultra-activist judge

I don't hold too much faith in the judicial system of Guanajuato, a state that is governed my the falangist far right of the PAN, yet the announcement that there will now be a legal investigation of Carlos Alberto Llamas Morales, the judge who notoriously sentenced a woman who had a miscarriage to 27 years in prison,  must be regarded good news. May it be the end of the beginning of the end of the war against women in Guanajuato. 

(Not so) Friendly fire not always on the left: Espino compares Cálderon to... Chávez!

Manuel Espino, head of Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América (ODCA), or the "Christian Democratic International," and longstanding critic of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, ratched up the rhetoric a notch  yesterday by arguing Calderón could be compared to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in his "authoritarianism." The reason is Calderón's alleged interference in the process of electing Espino´s successor of this loose center-right organization of christian democratic parties.


Espino, one should note, is hardly a centrist, but a rather ardent rightwinger close to the extremist secret Catholic society El Yunque, and was one of the main responsible for the dirty campaign against AMLO in 2006. Yet ever since he was forced out as PAN party chief in 2008, he has been a bitter opponent of Calderón, publishing three books since 2008 bashing Calderón and his policies.

He certainly has a point regarding his ouster as party president: While Espino was duly elected president of PAN by its National Council (which is exactly the mechanism PRD should resort to, by the way), while Calderón resorted to a mechanism long practiced by PRI, and criticized by Calderón when he in turn was party president, namely where the president of he nation would simply select the party president by a dedazo, rather than through a vote in the party organs. Once president, Calderón threw this old conviction out the window and duly selected both Germán Martínez and César Nava as subsequent PAN presidents. Hence much of the bitterness toward Calderón, as well as programmatic differences: In my eyes Calderón is rather a centrist and far from as socially conservative as Espino. 


"Friendly fire" in Mexican politics thus does not always happen on the left. 

On Seguro Popular

Not too much of a news story per se - Salomón Chertorivski, head of CNPSS, dismisses former director of Social Security Santiago Levy's claim that Seguro Popular promotes the informal economy - but it is worth noting that  Seguro Social, a program to offer healthcare for the many Mexicans outside of the formal economy, has now reached 36 million, and may reach more than 50 by early 2011.


A bit of background in a recent article in Americas Quarterly:

In the early 1990s, a calculation of national health accounts by the Fundación Mexicana para la Salud revealed that more than half of total Mexican health care expenditure was individual, out-of-pocket payments. Families and individuals were paying from their own incomes or savings for health care procedures, including emergency care. In other words, half of the population lacked health insurance.

The realization that households—the poor, in particular—had been paying catastrophic, out-of-pocket sums changed public perceptions and provoked public discussion of the need to expand public health coverage. Policymakers suddenly began to look at how financial issues affected the provision of health care and levels of poverty among Mexican households. 

It has also paid electoral dividends. According to a recent scholarly treatise of the 2006 campaign, by Alberto Diaz-Cayeros et al,  the effects, and as such popularity, of Seguro Popular was one of the major factors why many poor voters went for PAN rather than the PRD in that year's presidential election. 


First launched by President Vicente Fox, Seguro Popular may thus remain as one of the major social achievements of the two PAN administrations. 

Ebrard-AMLO game of chess continues

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, in reiterating the agreement with AMLO (and other potential candidates) that the left's candidate will be decided based on whoever is ahead of the polls, now declared that the poll should not just be open to members of the parties in question (PRD, PT, Convergencia), but to any citizen. Here, AMLO's "Legitimate Government" and its affiliated masses, most of whom appear not to belong to any party, would appear to give AMLO an advantage, but now clearly Ebrard also thinks he might be able to mobilize non-party supporters behind his candidacy. 
What will be AMLO´s next move?

Zacatecas damage assessment: PRD´s electoral disaster on July 4th

PRD certainly had a rather brutal defeat in Zacatecas, going from 46.40 percent to 24.6 percent - a pretty stunning drop.

Why did this happen, and what can the PRD learn from this?
The most important lesson, as the PRD seems to acknowledge, is that PRI-style dedazos will backfire drastically. The PRD's candidate was seen as an imposition by Governor Amalia Garcia, whose lackluster administration has been a deep disappointment, in particularly for those who saw her as a possible candidate for the presidency.

(We´ll talk about the damage done by former priísta, former perredista, and now ardent petista, Senator Ricardo Monreal later).

Yet also it shows the poor party loyalty from many of the nominal perredistas who bailed ship and actually supported the PRI candidate (himself a former perredista!), such as Raymundo Càrdenas.
It is understandable that there will be disaffection among the party base and elite under such circumstances. But it nonetheless illustrates the amazing opportunism among even long-time PRD cadres, who jump ship to join their old archenemy PRI.
What is to be done?