Cárdenas 2012. Which one?

I've noted before how I am convinced Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas has never given up his dream that another Cárdenas will become president of Mexico, like his father Lázaro. While I was leaning toward the idea that he is above all promoting  his son Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, it seems the old caudillo and PRD founder has not given up his own ambitions at reaching Los Pinos, even at age 76: He recently noted to La Jornada that he is not promoting nor dismissing another run: "I'm neither blind or lame; I am healthy." The run-up to 2012 just got even more interesting. 

The Economist leader gets it all right

From this week's The Economist:

"Mexico would be even better served if the United States renewed a ban on the sale of assault weapons that lapsed in 2004. Sadly, this looks unlikely to happen. Yet since 2006 alone, Mexican authorities have seized 55,000 of these weapons of war. That is enough to equip many NATO armies—and most were bought legally in American gunshops...

"So permissive when it comes to lethal weapons, the United States remains steadfast in its commitment to the prohibition of drugs, in the face of all the evidence that this policy fails to curb their consumption while creating vast profits for organised crime. It is welcome that California is now debating before a referendum on November 2nd, whether to legalise marijuana. This newspaper would vote for the proposition.."

And to top it all:

"If California votes in favour of legalisation, Mexico would be wise to follow suit..." 

Read it here, while it is still freely available.  

Is it Godoy or not on the tape?

The tape recording allegedly of PRD Federal Deputy Julio César Godoy Toscano and Servando Gómez "La Tuta" of the criminal drug gang La Familia Michoacana is very well worth listening to, which can be done here. If it is accurate, it is certainly damning, as it portrays a very cozy relationship between the Michoacano and the criminal capo. Is it real?

Godoy responded in a press communique, which include the following statements:
(it can be found in PRD's homepage)

- The recording was leaked by the PGR (attorney general's office) to the press, an illegal act.
- The recording was rejected as evidence by Michoacán and Tamaulipas and by Zacatecas magistrates
- PGR wants to win in public opinion what it has not been able to win in tribunal.
-The Federal government is trying to achieve a lynching of Godoy in public opinion.

All of the above seems true to me: It is a media lynching, as PGR has not achieved arresting Godoy yet by legal means, and the federal government is certainly trying to have public opinion judge him, likely in part also as a revenge or expression of frustration as their incompetent investigation has so far rendered little fruit.

Yet at the same time: Why didn't Godoy simply write, "the person in the recording is not me"?
Is it because it is really him?

AMLO backers create Bloque de Izquierda Unitaria in the Senate

PRD and the PT announced the formation of new cross-party group in the Mexican Senate whose main mission is to promote the presidential candidacy of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The group include 12 out of PRD's 25 senators, though most of the names are hardly a surprise, but are rather those senators that AMLO managed to install as his candidates in 2006:
*Julio César Aguirre Méndez, Josefina Cota, José Luis Máximo García Zalvidea, Jesús Garibay García,  Arturo Herviz Reyes, Salomón Jara, Rosalinda López, Arturo Núñez, Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz, María Roj, and lfonso Sánchez Anaya and Tomás Torres.

Two additional senators, Carlos Sotelo and Pablo Gómez, however, have never been close to AMLO; indeed, the latter did all he could to employ dirty tricks to prevent AMLO for running for the Mexico City government back in 2000, claiming he didn't fulfill the residency requirement. Gómez gained further noteriority in 2003 when the clumsy, stubborn, and utterly idiotic manner in which he negotiated with other parties in Congress basically led to the PRD having no impact on choosing the IFE councilors elected that year. I suspect his joining the AMLO camp has to do with  a promise that he will be a new Senate coordinator for the PRD's group. Carlos Sotelo was a big name in Nueva Izquierda, the majority faction to which national party president Jesús Ortega won, and his break with NI a while back was undoubtedly a blow to Ortega. Should he join with the pejistas to remove current coordinator Carlos Navarrete, of Nueva Izquierda,  Gómez is likely to lead the group (though  Tomás Torres has sought to do so as well).

It would be a major strike for AMLO if this were to happen.

Cecilia Romero and the Dunning effect

David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, and Justin Kruger, of New York University, are the brains behind the Kruger-Dunning Effect, which in all essence spells that most incompetent people are simply not even aware of how drastically incompetent they are, and consequently the cards are stacked against their learning from their mistakes. Unfortunately, society as a whole tend to pay their price for this illusory superiority.

Currently, I can think of no better example than Cecilia Romero, formerly of the  Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM). Following the Tamaulipas massacre of 72 migrants, she was finally forced out from the national migration institute, yet she almost literally had to be thrown out as she refused to leave. It was hardly the first time her job had been on line; she has been an utterly inefficient and incompetent leader, who only was able to cling on to her position thanks to her friendship with Señor Presidente, Felipe Calderón. 

Yet rather than quietly disappear and seek to leave her shameful tenure at the INM behind her, Romero is not only denying any responsibility for not doing enough to prevent the murder of these and countless other migrants, as well as an amazing rise in corruption within the INM, but is amazingly moving on with her previously declared intention to become the next party president of the PAN, the fourth declared candidate for the party presidency, yet one with a snowball's chance in hell to be elected by the PAN council. 

Yes, to paraphrase, Kruger-Dunning, some people are simply too dumb to realize how stupid they are.
Another case in point: Emilio "Etilio" González.

The Return of Carlos Salinas, continued...

While many a proverbial eyebrow was raised by the presence of el innombrable during the bicentennial festivities, Carlos Salinas' return to the public view was in a quite institutional role: Felipe Calderón invited all current presidents to attend. Similarly, at a forum yesterday celebrating the 20th anniversary of the IFE, the Federal Electoral Institute, the "unnameable" was invited and held a speech. Why? Well, AMLO, to be sure, announced that Salinas' public appearance was "only to show off, to give as a fact that he is the boss of the mafia that controls all the institutions of the country, including the institute and the electoral tribunals."


As has been repeatedly noted, here and elsewhere, AMLO's constant denunciations that Salinas is the éminence grise controlling the levers of... well, just about anything in Mexico, is getting more than tiresome, and begs the question why he bothers to participate then in the first place. More ominously, by disqualifying every and all of Mexico's institutions, AMLO certainly sets the stage for future fraude protests, whether in Mexico State 2011, electing PRD's new president, electing PRD's 2012 presidential candidate, and the next miss universe, for that matter. 


Regardless, the reason is more profane: Salinas was invited to the forum for the simple fact that the IFE, in its initial form, and despite all its deficiencies, was set up in 1990 under his watch. It was, however, the first time in quite a few years that the reviled ex-president made a public discourse. It is worth reading in its entirety, and can be accessed here. 

Of note I would point to one statement in particular  that demonstrates that Salinas has hardly gotten any less cynical by the years:

"in 1988 the institutional framework was not ready, the electoral organ  was then controlled by the government and its party, and because of this the election authority could not build consensus; there was no electoral tribunal; and one could not give the results the same day of the election."

Really? The 1988 debacle, with the resulting murders of hundreds of activists, most of them from the PRD, really only happened because the "institutional framework" was not ready? 1988 happened because PRI engaged in one of the most blatant acts of fraud in its fraud-ridden history! To try to wash his hands off of this fraud by blaming it on the lack of well-functioning institutions is akin to saying, "oh, it's so terrible that we raped and killed the girl, but if only there had been police present, it wouldn't have happened."


Salinas and the PRI has much blood on their hands, and no amount of self-justification is going to wash off their responsibility for the 1988 fraud and the murders of party activists that followed. 

AMLO still can't get himself expelled from the PRD: "they are the ones who will have to go"

Despite his much-publicized threats to "ask for a leave of absence" from the party, AMLO declared he will still remain within the PRD, despite the massive 2/3 vote in the Mexico State local branch in favor of opening up for an alliance with PAN: 


"We are not leaving the party; let it be clear that it is they who will have to leave, not us."


As noted before, AMLO knows well that an expulsion from the PRD would be far more advantageous to him simply leaving, so he is moving forward, announcing that he will still present his own candidate for the upcoming gubernatorial elections. The two most likely bets are Senator Yeidckol Polevnsky and PRD deputy Alejandro Encinas, though I strongly doubt that Encinas really want to take the drastic step of breaking so directly with the party he helped found. 


In any case, Marcelo Ebrard, AMLO's rival for the 2012 nomination, noted that the local PRD branch's decision was "logical," which indeed it was, if the main goal remains to defeat a PRI candidate in Mexico State and, by extension, Peña Nieto in 2012. One should also take note that Juan Ramón de la Fuente, who is muy presidenciable, also backed the alliances: So much for the hopes of PRI to make him their Mexico City mayor, as El Universal's paranoid-megalomaniac-in-chief Ricardo Alemán earlier claimed a likely scenario. 


The question is now how to get past those tricky residency requirements to make de la Fuente a candidate in Edomex...