José Murat Casab could be expelled from PRI - and Zeferino Torreblanca "not going to eat shit"

It's the season of party purges. A mere days after Luis Armando Reynoso Femat was kicked out of the PAN - Manuel Espino may follow soon - PRI announced that it has started the process of expelling José Murat Casab from the party. 


Murat is also a former governor - he was the PRI governor of Oaxaca 1998-2004 - and is now accused of having assisted, or not having done anything to prevent, Gabino Cué from winning the governorship of Oaxaca this July. Despite having been a national senator and four-time national deputy for the PRI, as well as a range of other offices within the party, Murat has become somewhat of a loose cannon the last couple of years. In a book released in 2008, “La Agonía de la Democracia Mexicana," he attacked his own party for having kept a "complicit silence" during the "scandalous election" in 2006, which he openly rejected as a "fraud." (See an El Universal review of the book here). Murat Casab (of Iraqi origin) also condemned the TEPJF, the highest electoral court in Mexico, as accomplices in the operation - though it should be noted that he hardly produces any hard evidence for either this or the "fraud" in general in his book. 


Incidentally, another soon-to-be ex-governor will possibly added to the list of party expulsions: Zeferino Torreblanca of Guerrero. Zeferino recently launched an angry tirade against the PRD when he failed to impose his own candidate to succeed him as governor. 
He has since continued his criticism, declaring to a group of municipal mayors - all from PRI - 

"Out of convenience, some politicians eat shit. I'm not going to eat shit from nowhere, I promised not to get rich from the government and not go around lying; I will work to promote democracy in the [upcoming] vote;  it's up to you... why don't they explain why they handed over Guerrero, let's see what they'll tell the lower PRD members; here the PRD was the strongest"

Strong and quite peculiar words, in particular as Torreblanca has been strongly criticized for riding roughshod over the PRD and almost completely shutting it out of his own government. 
Now the kicker: The Guerrero branch of the PRD revealed that Torreblanca will not be able to compete on any PRD label in the near future as he has not paid his own membership dues since mid-2009; since 2005 he has moreover only paid a fraction of the peso amount party regulations state that an executive should contribute to the party. 


Even AMLO has paid his.  


The question remains: For whom will Torreblanca campaign in 2011?

2006, again: Errors, but no fraud, according to Woldenberg.

It was not the first time and I'll bet a Herradura Reposado that it will not be last time that the contested 2006 election will be subject of academic panels and conferences. 
Yet academic José Woldenberg's take on the 2006 elections are nonetheless significant. Woldenberg is a man who throughout his career has always been placed squarely on the political left; he was even a PRD member for couple of years, though he left it in 1991.   Notably, he was also the first IFE president (1997-2003), and the UNAM professor remains a man of very high credibility to many - to the point where not a few people, including many perredistas, have toyed around with the idea of "Woldenberg Presidente!" for 2012. 
(which probably would make him the first Jewish presidential candidate in Mexican history, though I'll defer to Mexfiles' expertise on that subject). 


Regardless: Woldenberg in a recent conference on the democratic transition in Mexico noted that nobody has presented any evidence that Calderón's victory was artificially engineered: The IFE commited mistakes" - "I emphasize, mistakes, not fraud" - Woldenberg dixit. 


The mistakes were, according to Woldenberg, a badly designed PREP, the Preliminary Electoral Results Program, and to only declare that the results were "close" but not giving any  figures from the quick count that night. 


(Actually, Luis Carlos Ugalde, the much maligned IFE president, dealt with this as well in his Así lo viví, now out in cheap bolsillo edition, , which is very much worth a read. Here Ugalde relates that he still wonders if this was a mistake, yet points out that giving out preliminary numbers that favored on of the candidates, where the difference was still within margin of error, might very well have led to the candidate apparently in the lead simply declaring victory.)


Yet here I agree more with Virgilio Andrade, who in my opinion is one of the brightest stars to have served on the IFE. Andrade accepts that the PREP was not clear, but that the real problem was the IFE had not explained properly in advanced that deals had been made in advance with the parties that no winner were to be declared if the preliminary results of the quick count (not to be confused with the PREP) did not give a clear winner.


Regardless, Woldenberg is hardly likely to score any points with the AMLO camp for his recent reaffirmation that while the elections were polarized and dirty, there was no fraud in 2006. 

Cecilia Romero: When will this inept official be relived of the "duties" she failed to perform?

When will Cecilia Romero be relived of the"duties" that she certainly has failed to perform as head of the National Institute of Migration? Very soon, it seems: Interior Minister Blake Mora refuses to confirm that she will remain in her post.  


Proceso reports in this week's print edition that the National Human Rights Commission and the national ombudsman for years have asked that INM take preventive measures to stop the veritable industry of kidnapping immigrants. Romero has never even bothered to send them a reply, let alone take any serious measures. The slaughtered 72 immigrants, dramatic as it is on its own, is unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg. Yet while Romero has weathered scandals in the past, I am hard pressed to believe she'll survive this one. 

Broad condemnation of Onésimo Cepeda's attack on the state

While so far only the PRD, represented most visibly by Mexico City Chief of Government Marcelo Ebrard's lawsuit, has taken on the responsibility of defending the Mexican constitution and democracy itself from vicious attacks by a highly reactionary church, more legislators from PAN and PRI finally step in the ring to answer bishop Onésimo Cepeda's outright rejection of the secular state.

PRI national deputy Rubén Moreira, head of the Human Rights Commission in the lower house, accuses the bishop of undermining the secular through his actions and declarations. Senator María de los Ángeles Moreno, also of the PRI, found the need to remind the bishop of the supremacy of the Mexican state over the church, while Gustavo Madero, PAN Senator and possibly its next party president, reminds the bishop of the separation of church and state.
As if he ever forgot it.

Juventino Castro y Castro, former Supreme Court minister (judge) and now president of the Commission of Constitutional Affairs, calls on the government to "put [Cepeda] in his place". One shouldn't hold one's breath: Shamelessly, Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora still refuses to do his job and defend the constitution and the institutions of the Mexican state by not uttering one word of criticism against the church.

Moreira gets the final word on Cepeda:  "This little father is not going to heaven for being so vulgar"

Cecilia Romero, the National Institute for Migration, and Amnesty International

Cecilia Romero, head of the National  Institute for Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración, INM), has much in common with other Calderón appointees: She is close personally to the president, yet appears highly ineffectual at her job. Following the recent discovery of the 72 migrants in Tamaulipas murdered by the Zetas, who are the main traffickers in immigrants, attention has again shone on the incompetent head of INM, an institute she has led for four years. Romero felt compelled to publicly reject that she was not leaving the INM - again hardly the first time - though reportedly she has lost the confidence of Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora. Given that Blake Mora is also very close to Calderón, things might be different this time. 


On the subject of immigration, and particular in light of the gruesome events of the past week, I want to draw attention to a superb investigation by London-based Amnesty International, called "Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico." (direct PDF download here). It offers a tremendous amount of insights into the migrant situation in Mexico, as well as the role of Mexican state institutions. The INM certainly does not come across in too glowing a light, as it appears far more occupied deporting illegal immigrants rather than helping the victims of human trafficking, of rapes, of beatings, of abuse. INM comes across every bit as brutal and abusive as its U.S. counterpart.


Given the venomous poison spewed by the catholic clergy the past weeks (or years), it is worth pointing out, as the Amnesty report does, the tremendously important and good work carried out by local catholic priests in states such as Tabasco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, where priest-run shelters, as well as those of private individuals, not only give rest and comfort to exhausted migrants, but very often protect their very lives. 


While I personally believe most of these people are motivated by the kindness of their heart rather than by their faith, given the disconnect between these valiant individuals and their ultra reactionary high clergy leaders, the saying comes to mind that "christianity is that good, that even the catholic church has not managed to destroy it in two thousand years."

From the horse's mouth: Bishop Onésimo Cepeda rejects the secular state

Onésimo Cepeda, bishop of Ecatepec in Mexico state and very close to Governor Enrique Peña Nieta, declared that he finds the secular state "a load of crap" (thanks to Gancho for etymological assistance).

In His Own Words:

I believe that the secular state does not exist. I am a lawyer. The State is composed of people, territory and power. The people are secular? No. The cornfields, that is, its territory, is it secular?, No. Is the government secular?, Yes. So, we are a state ruled by a secular government. This is the legal definition. The secular state, God forgive me, is a a load of crap."

Can the catholic clergy make it any more clearer how little it respects the Mexican constitution, or the citizens of the Mexican state?

And lest we forget: Bishop Onésimo Cepeda is under investigation for money laundering and procedural fraud.

Se ve, se siente, De la Fuente Presidente

Juan Ramón de la Fuente penned an eloquent defense of the secular state in today's El Universal, in which he moreover used the occasion to throw a jab at Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
De la Fuente wisely bides his time, yet some postulation for a high political office appears increasingly likely in 2011-2012.