Para los intensos

The facebook backlash. Translated as "My facebook wall is not the Office of the Electoral Crimes Prosecutor, go complain somewhere else."

Televisa: what Soriana videos?

This morning I watched about a 10 minute election round-up on Televisa. The first segment was a really grating exchange between the PRD and PRI IFE representatives. The PRDista was accusing EPN and the PRI of massive vote-buying. The PRIista's strategy was to deny everything. Then they went to AMLO's press conference at PRD headquarters that was apparently constructed of Soriana gift cards. There he further accused the PRI of massive 'compra y coaccion.' Two sides, with a balance of the time given to the accusations of the izquierda. Finally, Televisa presented Soriana's letter attempting to explain just how they got caught up in this mess. Luckily for the integrity of Mexico's democracy, we're told, this was all a big mistake and the cards are nothing more than a customer/employee loyalty program.

Well, when is the last time hundreds of people showed up at la super clamoring to spend their gift cards after word spreads that the cards will be cancelled now that the gig is up? All Televisa had to do was show one of the many YouTube videos of person after person quite openly stating that the PRI gave them these cards in exchange for their vote in the packed aisles. But that would rock the boat too much. Much easier to keep the whole affair as a 'he said, she said' instead of actually presenting the evidence.

The worst thing is that although the PRI said the cards were worth 300-500 pesos, people are discovering when they get to their local Soriana that most of them are worth only 100 pesos.

The very next story involved a brewing PRD campaign finance scandal with a tapped phone call and on cue, ominous music.

Why (some) Mexicans voted

How Mexico voted

More from El Universal.

No PRI majorities in Congress

When the new congress gets to "work" in September, EPN's PRI will have at most 249 out of 500 seats in the camara de diputados and 61 out of 128 seats in the senate. Far short of the 2/3 majority to pass constitutional amendments needed to overhaul Pemex and open the company to foreign investment. The proposed reform is shaping up to be either EPN's Waterloo or Gettysburg.

It will be interesting to watch the PRI actually sweat to round up votes for once. Prior to 2000, the party held massive majorities in congress, and since then they've perfected the art of blocking legislation, along with the PRD on plenty of occasions, in order to stick it first to Fox and then to Calderon.

Estudiantes a la calle!

La Jornada's report. Proceso's report.

Passed along from a friend on Facebook: "Hoy México eligió a un Presidente muy parecido a su pueblo: Nunca ha leído un libro en su vida, es infiel y quiere una vida de novela."

"Today Mexico elected a president that looks a lot like its people: he's never read a book in his life, he's unfaithful, and he wants a soap opera life."

Fox & Calderon's failure

Putting aside 1988 for the purposes of this post, since 1994 there have been three luchadores in Mexico's electoral ring; the PAN, the PRD, and the PRI. Since that time, no single candidate has gained over 50% of the vote and Pena-Nieto won't clear the magic number tonight either. Which is to say that more voters have voted against the winning candidate than have voted for the new mandatario.

Nevertheless, neither Fox nor Calderon pushed for a run-off presidential election system. Instead they squandered their political capital on the pointless war on drugs.

Fear the PRI

The view of Aguachile's blogger, worth reading in full:

"I don't share the optimism. I truly fear for Mexico's democracy. I may well be wrong and I hope I am, but one doesn't have to look very deeply at Enrique Peña Nieto's trajectory to find a man who represents every one of PRI's vices in the past: Collusion with the media, steamrolling of the opposition, blatant institutional engineering (Ley Peña-why on earth has the media forgotten about this?), cover-up of corruption, mediocre social programs, clientelism, and lest we forget, outright authoritarianism. There is much more, but this is only from the past few years of his Mexico State government. The past days, more and more stuff is simply seeping to the surface.

This is a man who went to Oaxaca in 2010 to actively stump for a murderous repressor and scoundrel, Ulises Ruiz, when he tried to impose his PRI successor, and on whose campaign trail in Puebla had the pedophile-protecting Mario Marín appear at his campaign events...

Yet it is not only about one man, Peña Nieto - and I hold him in a very low regard - but of a party as well, which has shown absolutely no indication it has changed. I don't think this is demagoguery; there are many good priístas just like there are good people in any party. But a party carries within it an imprint that it is very, very hard to rid itself of. And looking at how PRI and their thugs acted in the 2010 and 2011 state elections, I fear for Mexico's democracy should they return to executive powers, backed by legislative majorities. They won't be easily removed."

AMLO & Televisa

From The Guardian's investigative report about Televisa's concerted effort to take down Lopez-Obrador's 2006 campaign and boost Pena-Nieto and the PRI to victory in 2012:

"One of the documents is a PowerPoint presentation which explicitly states its aim of making sure "López Obrador does not win the 2006 elections". That bitterly contested election saw the leftwing candidate lose a commanding lead and ended with him claiming he had been cheated.

It was apparently created just after midnight on 4 April 2005, hours before President Fox was reported to have met the heads of Televisa and TV Azteca.

Fox was facing growing criticism for an attempt to get Lopez Obrador, then mayor of Mexico City, impeached over a minor planning dispute. The document outlines short-term measures for controlling the backlash, a period of national mourning for the recently-deceased Pope John Paul II to distract attention from the growing row. The next day Fox declared a day of mourning for the pontiff.

Longer-term strategies proposed to "dismantle the public perception that Lopez Obrador is a martyr/saviour," by boosting news coverage of crime in the capital and revisiting old corruption cases involving his former allies. The plan also envisaged "promoting personal stories of crimes suffered [in the capital] by showbiz celebrities" and "urging the inhabitants of the Big Brother house" to do the same. Some Televisa celebrities did just that, both on showbiz programmes and in the Mexican version of Celebrity Big Brother broadcast that May.

The document also advises that scriptwriters of a popular political weekly satire show called El Privilegio de Mandar should make the character who represented López Obrador appear "clumsy" and "inept." The final episode of the show, broadcast immediately after the 2006 elections – when the result of a recount was still pending – ended with a non-humorous speech by an actor calling on López Obrador to accept defeat."

PRD Content with Last Place

Mexico's leftist party, the PRD, has just ensured its third place finish in next year's election. When given the opportunity to nominate Mexico City's progressive and technocratic mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, the party instead opted to move ahead with an odd nominating poll of 6,000 anonymous Mexicans.

Somehow this resulted in Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador being selected to lead the fatally divided PRD into the 2012 vote, presumably as a follow up act to his deeply unimpressive 2006 campaign. Six years ago his campaign benefited greatly from the petty and very public efforts of Mexico's two other major parties to keep him out of the race on spurious criminal charges and Mexicans gave him a commanding lead a couple of months out from the election. Then he decided to skip out on the debates and feed the fears of middle class Mexicans with strange and paranoid pronouncements. This of course was nothing compared to what occurred after he questionably lost a razor thin election. More paranoia ensued and Mexico City streets were shut down for months.

Assuming the PRI walks away with this election, perhaps it was smart for Ebrard to sit this one out. Six years, though, is a long time.

Mexican Elections: A Readout

Mexico went to the polls yesterday to elect 12 governors and dozens of presidentes municipales. The results appear to show the status quo holding steady, with the PRI holding 6 governorships, losing 3 state houses while gaining 3 others. However, the expectations were high for the PRI and the 3 states lost were symbolically and strategically important for several reasons.

In Oaxaca, a similar coalition to one built in 2004 and the same candidate from that year, Gabino Cue, beat back the PRI, who have controlled Oaxaca since 1929. The outgoing governor, Ulises Ruiz, was accused of stealing the '04 election and oversaw tremendous state repression during the '06-'07 civil unrest. He was also found responsible for violating the human rights of Oaxacan citizens by the Supreme Court last fall. In Sinaloa, another PAN-PRD coalition candidate, Mario Lopez Valdez, pulled off an upset over the former mayor of Culican who has been connected to powerful drug traffickers for decades. And in Puebla, the outgoing PRI governor, who used the power of his office to kidnap a muckraking journalist, seemed to taint his party's candidate in yesterday's election.

Neither the PAN nor the PRD though can be considered yesterday's victors. About President Calderon and the PAN, the AP wrote, "Calderon's conservative National Action Party won not a single state on its own, and lost two it had held, and needed desperate alliances with leftists to wrest strongholds from the old ruling party."

The PRD is still in shambles following Lopez Obrador's fractious leadership over the party and will need a personally dynamic candidate untainted by (and possibly at odds) with AMLO in 2012 to inspire any following. Is Marcelo Ebrard such a candidate?

In the end, the PRI is still well-positioned to take Los Pinos in 2012 but will now have to run on its governing record as the majority party in Congress and the party with nearly 2/3rds of Mexico's governorships. For the record, the prospect of the PRI, whose continued political philosophy is its own self-interest, retaking the presidency would be a step back for Mexican democracy. But, as they say, nations end up with the leaders they deserve.

The PAN-PRD alliance could offer a viable pathway towards the governorship in Estado de Mexico, currently held by the PRI's leading presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto. A loss by the PRI there would deflate his prestige slightly. The PAN-PRD players would do well to remember the battles they waged together in 1988 after Salinas stole the election from Lazaro Cardenas.

Justice in Oaxaca

Mexico's Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Governor of Oaxaca was guilty by omission of la violación grave de garantías individuales during the unrest that shook the city of Oaxaca in 2006 and 2007. The justices voted 7-4 to hold Ulises Ruiz responsible for seriously violating Oaxacans' rights of access to justice, free expression, movement and social peace. President Fox and others at the federal level were exonerated.

The vote only serves as a recommendation to other prosecuting agencies and it appears that the only real punishment that will be delivered is the shame and political pressure it will place upon the governor during his remaining year in office. As Nancy Davies of Narco News put it, "This court decision comes as a boon to the anti-PRI political alliance for 2010. We await what benefits it might bring to the local struggle."

What began as a teachers' strike quickly transformed into a battle to topple the governor when protesters were brutally repressed by members of various police forces within the state as well as by paramilitary groups formed by off-duty cops and angry priista militantes. A substantial number of Oaxaquenos have disputed his election since the vote of August 2004, as I witnessed during my stay immediately following the election.

The PRI Win Big In Mexico, But Who Won For Best Parody Spot?

Due to their own sad political history and some congenitally predisposed characteristic, Mexicans enjoy an acute ability to skewer their politicians. This past election cycle, in which the PRI picked up 135 seats in the lower house of Congress to overtake the PAN and position itself well for the 2012 presidential election, was no exception to the noble history of politician skewering. In fact, with the ascent of Youtube, parodies of political ads have become an art form and now enjoy a global reach. Without further ado, here are the best parodies of the 2009 cycle:

Un aplauso fuerte to the makers of these spots, way to stick it to them!

Mexico Votes Tomorrow...Y Los Spots?

Mexico's midterm elections are scheduled for July 5. The public has shown support for President Calderon's battle against the narcos, however, it seems that the PRI will close the gap significantly between PAN's 206 seats and the PRI's 106 in the Camara de Diputados. The PRD, three years after AMLO and a bitter leadership fight, will struggle to remain a major party this cycle. Here are some of the TV spots: 

A typical PAN spot, attempting the before and after contrast and also highlighting the social welfare program, Oportunidades. Noticeably not featuring the president, celebrity endorsers, or other national figures:

Mariana, who is something of a mascot/spokesperson for the PRD, has been ubiquitous in their spots:

The PRI has focused their ads on policy proposals. Here is a collection of their ads, note their slogan PRImero Mexico:

Coming soon, the parodies (which are plentiful), the voto nulo campaign, and maybe some ads from smaller parties.