Calderon "blind" to torture, new Amnesty report

Amnesty International's new report on Mexico is tough reading for Mexico's president. In criticizing his administration's human rights policy, the report concludes,

The government of Felipe Calderón has prioritised public security and combating organize crime, but this has in effect resulted in turning a blind eye to widespread human right violations.

In particular, the human rights group criticizes the Calderón administration's passivity toward "endemic" torture carried out by security forces against detainees, which has increased drastically the past years.

See the press release here, and the report, in pdf form, here,

Source:
Known abusers, but victims ignored: Torture and ill-treatment in Mexico. Amnesty International, 2012

AMLO on violence

AMLO on violence:

I respect highly those who argue that only through armed force can one achieve the changes the country needs, but I do not share this. 

He also rejected to sit down for any talks with president-elect  Enrique Peña Nieto, and advised others to reject dialogue as well.

Noted.

Source:
AMLO rechaza vía armada para cambio. El Universal, Oct. 9, 2012

In Zapata's land, the left's first governor

It may be a small state - it is only beat by Tlaxcala in being Mexico's smallest, and less than 2 million reside there - but for the left, winning the state of Morelos was very important for many reasons beyond the obvious. There is for sure the historical backdrop: Morelos was the land of the great Emiliano Zapata, who launched his agrarian revolutionary movement from the state and died there after a 1919 ambush.

With the left's victory in Morelos, it also won a state it has never held before. The state had already seen alternation in power - PAN ran it from 2000 until recently, in two generally terrible administrations. It is now the left's turn to show it can do better.

A few days ago, Graco Ramírez Garrido Abreu, a veteran on the left and a PRD founder in 1989, finally assumed as governor. While he was at one point the man who recruited AMLO to the PRD - AMLO only ditched the PRI when he failed to become its Tabasco governor candidate - the relationship between "Graco," as he is often referred to, and AMLO is quite abysmal, especially since AMLO's hysterical mobilizations against an imagined privatization of PEMEX in 2008.

With Graco's call for dialogue with Mexico's soon-to-be president, Enrique Peña Nieto - repeated in his inauguration speech - it was hardly a surprise that AMLO did not show up. PRD founder Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas did.

First on his agenda seems to be to carry out what he often brought up during the campaign: A purge of the state's police forces, many of whom are generally regarded to be turning a blind eye, to say the least, to the drug "cartels" * in the state. Next, to "certify" a new force, which he promises to do by the end of 2012.

(Another point: The left governs Mexico City, Morelos, nearby Guerrero, Oaxaca, and finally Tabasco (AMLO loyalist  Arturo Núñez). The geographic concentration is notable in itself , but for governance and inter-state cooperation it may also be a boon. Expect some major pronunciations here soon).


Source:
Graco Ramírez plantea diálogo con Peña Nieto. El Universal, Oct. 2, 2012
Certificar policías este año, ofrece Graco. El Universal, Oct. 10, 2012

* I am happy to note The Economist's style change to put "cartels" in quotation marks. As the news publication duly notes, the murderous drug gangs are hardly price-fixing cartels, but bloody competitors. I think that's a pretty good compromise between keeping a flawed term that is nevertheless in very common use, yet still noting its incorrect usage.

PAN, now with code of ethics

This is just too funny: Barely a few weeks before the PAN will leave the federal government, beat by the old ruling party it ousted in 2000, the rightwing party has suddenly pronounced a new ethics code that aims to set up the "complete autonomy" of the party vis-a-vis the federal government.

According to the document,

The structures of governance should not be confused with the party structures. The permanent temptation of reproducing the model of the party of the state should be rejected institutionally. 

Yes, it is a hell lot easier to discover that one's party should be autonomous of the government - and not merely reproducing the vices of the PRI, where the party and the state were most often inseparable - just as you are about to leave.

It would ring a lot less hollow if the PAN - which copied so many of PRI's nefarious practices and in the end almost fully corrupted its once-vaunted party organization - would have attempted any such move during any one of the twelve years it actually held national power.

Source:
Panistas se imponen código de ética. El Universal, Oct. 7, 2012

Mexico 2006 ballots finally to be destroyed

With the final decision of IFE, Mexico's institute responsible for organizing elections, to destroy what remains of the ballots used in Mexico's contentious 2006 election, that saga seems to be coming to an end.

IFE's general council also agreed to destroy the 2012 ballots.

A couple of years after the fraudulent 1988 election, PRI and PAN conspired, following a deal with Carlos Salinas and Diego Fernández de Cevallos, Diego, to have the ballots burned so as to remove forever any possibility of finally knowing the extent of the fraud that brought Salinas to power.

Yet one should be very careful with any analogies to 2006 here. In 1988, all opposition candidates claimed that fraud had taken place, and much evidence surfaced to back the claim. After July 2, 2006, AMLO was the sole candidate to claim fraud took place - as he claimed in 2012 as well. Yet not one single investigation has uncovered the slightest evidence that AMLO won more votes than Calderón, or that any massive fraurd took place where ballots were altered in any systematic way favoring the PAN candidate.

It is understandable that this is still a touchy issue for many, especially those individuals and organizations who have repeatedly sought access to the 2006 ballots. Yet IFE has pretty good reasons for wanting them burned. The institute is, for sure, required by law to dispose of electoral material after the final verdict has been passed on an election, but other motives are quite mundane: Money. It has so far cost the institute more than half a billion pesos to store them, and half a billion pesos more for the army to store them.

And the clincher: Despite the billion pesos spent, much of the ballots are already so rotten and decayed that they are useless in any case.

But the larger point should not be forgotten: Even if much of the ballots were not already destroyed, there is no reason to think that any full recount would alter the result in any significant way.
It seems to me that it is therefore time to let go.

Source:
Acuerda el IFE eliminar boletas. El Universal, Oct. 4, 2012

PAN party may slash membership in half

Mexico's rightwing party the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), is doing exactly what its left counterpart the PRD undertook last year: A purge of its party rolls, long outdated and bloated, and prone to manipulation. It's about time.

The party's devastating internal fights over national candidacies ahead of the July 1, 2012 federal election exposed a party that is only a shadow of its former self: Massive corruption, vote-buying, coercion, and a rash of truly indigestible candidates, whose incompetence and corruption should ban then from even serving as ticket takers at the local movie theater, let alone national lawmakers.

While he turned a blind eye to much of this, in order to at least try to curb the practices of clientelism and vote-buying, PAN leader Gustavo Madero, is launching a campaign where members will have to reaffirm their membership, and where the burden thus falls on the individual member to do so: Prove that you exist and that you are an active member so that we know you're real -and the burden of proof falls on the member, who will have to appear in person with party and voter credentials at their local office, or else.

Jan. 6, 2012, the party will publish its "updated" membership rolls. Madero suggested its membership rolls may well be cut in half. It will be very interesting to see what states these "ghost members" will particularly appear in. My money is on Veracruz and Nuevo León in particular

Source:
Inicia PAN depuración de padrón de afiliados. El Universal, Oct. 1, 2012
AN puede reducir 50% su padrón. El Universal, Oct. 2, 2012

The plagiarizing senator with no shame

This is just plain embarrassing, and should be grounds for disqualification for even being considered a national political candidate, let alone for a senate seat: Plagiarism in your academic thesis.

But alas, PAN still decided to nominate María del Pilar Ortega Martínez as a suplente, or alternate/substitute candidate, as it were for the late Alonso Lujambio, which means she was just "promoted" to occupy his senate seat for the remainder of the 6-year term, which has just started.

The short story: Ortega Martínez was in 2008 revealed to have handed in a thesis for Harvard University, no less, that was simply lifted from the works of others, and to boot put together in final form by her own staff! Reportedly  dr. Kelly Gallagher of Harvard as a consequence sought to have her expelled from the university. I wonder what kind of interventions took place behind the scenes to protect the then-federal deputy.

It speaks to just how low the conservative PAN has sunk when it comes to the quality of their nominations for national office.

Here's a photo of the now-Senator. Sin vergüenza!

SPD Noticias

Source:
Suplente de Lujambio “plagió” en Harvard. El Universal, Sept. 26, 2012