Fight over revered ex-president’s image dominates Mexico’s oil reform debate

The Washington Post 
August 16, 2013

The son of Mexico’s most revered modern president, known for nationalizing Mexico’s oil industry, says his dad is rolling in his grave.

In fact, both sides in the heated debate over proposals to open Mexico’s oil industry to private companies are using the image of former president Lazaro Cardenas, roughly Mexico’s equivalent of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Current President Enrique Pena Nieto has launched a blitz of TV ads that prominently feature photos of Cardenas, who expropriated foreign oil companies and nationalized the industry when he was president from 1934 to 1940.

Like FDR, who was known for helping pull America out of the depression with his ‘new deal’ public works programs, Cardenas is remembered for handing out land to poor farmers and standing up to the foreign oil companies that once took the lion’s share of profits from Mexican oil.  Read more. 

Mexico Telecommunications Reform: Too Good to Be True?

HuffPost Blog
Irene Mia
March 28, 2013

A long-awaited telecommunications reform, presented to Congress on March 11 by Enrique Peña Nieto, was passed swiftly by the lower house with relative few modifications to its ambitious scope and is now set to be approved by the upper house in an unthinkable development just a few months ago when, in the run up to the presidential election (in July 2012), social protests, loosely coordinated by the #YoSoy132 student movement, erupted against media bias in favor of the now ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). More in general, the telecommunications reform, coupled with other significant steps made by Peña Nieto's administration to advance its reform agenda in just a few months may reassure those who were skeptical of the president's willingness and ability to challenge powerful interest groups (including unions, state government and business lobbies) which had historically been part of the PRI support base. The president has proven a master in pragmatic politics, as many other PRI leaders in the past, reaching out to the opposition and brokering deals outside and before presenting bills in Congress. Read more. 

Mexico's lower house gives general approval for telecoms bill

Reuters
By Dave Graham and Miguel Gutierrez
Mexico City, Mar 22, 2013

Mexico's lower house of Congress gave broad approval Thursday night to a telecommunications reform that threatens to loosen tycoon Carlos Slim's grip on the phone market and broadcaster Televisa's dominance of the airwaves.

The proposal attracted overwhelming support, with 414 lawmakers in favor of the reform and only 50 opposed.

Lawmakers must still vote on amendments to the bill, which has dampened confidence in Slim's prospects, though investors are hopeful the Mexican tycoon can at least partly offset curbs to his phone empire by entering the television market.

The bill, presented by the government on March 11, aims to boost competition in the telecoms sector by increasing foreign investment and giving regulators the power to force companies with a market share above 50 percent to sell assets.

"In our country there is just one territory and it is not the territory or property of any one telephone company," said Julio Cesar Moreno, a congressman and member of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, during the debate.  Read more. 

Mexico's leftist opposition rallies against energy reforms

Reuters
By David Alire Garcia
Mexico City, Mar 18, 2013

(Reuters) - Waving party flags and shouting their support, tens of thousands of leftist party members rallied on Sunday against government plans to overhaul Mexico's energy sector, a preview of the tough road ahead for President Enrique Pena Nieto's reform push.

Organized by the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, the rally took place on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the nationalization of the country's oil industry, the historical pivot that gave birth to state oil monopoly Pemex.


Speakers denounced any move to privatize the government-run oil giant, even though Pena Nieto and other members of his centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have consistently denied any plans to sell or privatize Pemex.

"We are being loyal to this historical legacy that has given our oil riches to the nation and we are going to defend it with everything we've got," said Jesus Zambrano, the PRD's national president, to rousing applause.  Read more. 

Mexico counts 26,121 missing during Calderon era

The LA Times 
By Cecilia Sanchez, Daniel Hernandez and Richard Fausset
February 26, 2013

Mexico City - The number of people who went missing in Mexico during the six years of former President Felipe Calderon’s administration stands at 26,121, government officials said Tuesday, a figure that would rank among the worst episodes of "disappearances" in Latin American history.

The official statistic, which includes people reported missing between December 2006 and November 2012, was released at a news conference by Lia Limon, the subsecretary for legal affairs and human rights under new President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office Dec. 1.

Her announcement came days after Human Rights Watch issued a scathing report that blamed Mexican security forces for many disappearances during the government’s crackdown on domestic drug cartels, which began in earnest in December 2006. The report also blamed the Calderon government for failing to adequately investigate the disappearances.  Read more. 

Mexico City mayor seeks to unite left after split

Dave Graham and Anahi Rama

Reuters: September 13, 2012

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is trying to rally Mexico's left behind him after rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would break with the established parties following his defeat in July's presidential election.

Lopez Obrador led a three-party leftist alliance to second place in the election, but on Sunday he told a massive crowd in Mexico City he would form a new political group, potentially opening up a serious rift in the left.

In an interview with Reuters, Ebrard said on Thursday he aims to bring the left back together, contrasting himself with Lopez Obrador, who has strong support among the poor and came close to winning the last two elections but alienated centrist voters with his combative style.

Lopez Obrador staged massive, disruptive protests in the capital to contest his narrow presidential loss to Felipe Calderon in 2006 and this time around he is refusing to accept defeat to President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto.

By going solo with a new party, Lopez Obrador has laid bare tensions in the left between moderates ready to work in Congress and accept Pena Nieto's win, and those firmly opposed to cooperating with his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Lopez Obrador's decision was "utterly predictable" and had not helped the cause, Ebrard said, noting it would be "absurd" if the left did not run on a joint ticket in future elections.

"What we must avoid is having the left destroy itself, that we lose votes next year, that we're no longer second strongest force in 2015 (when legislative elections are held)," said Ebrard, 52, who plans to run for the presidency in 2018. Read more. 

Ex-candidate quits Mexico's main leftist party

Sunday, September 9, 2012 

Houston Chronicle: MEXICO CITY (AP) — The man who led Mexico's main leftist party in the past two presidential elections announced Sunday he is leaving it behind and may start a new party, throwing uncertainty over the future of the nation's political left.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told supporters at a rally at Mexico City's main plaza that he is leaving the Democratic Revolution Party "on the best of terms." He also announced he is leaving the smaller Labor Party andCitizens' Movement, which also backed him in the July presidential election, when he finished second.

Lopez Obrador said he will begin consultations that would create a new party out of another, less formal organization that backed him, the Movement for National Regeneration.

The motives for the break were not clear, but it could complicate efforts for the left to rally again around a single candidate as it has in every election since 1988.

Lopez Obrador has been the most prominent figure within Democratic Revolution in recent years, one of only two people it has ever run for the presidency since forming in the wake of the fraud-tainted 1988 election. Read more.

Mexican retailer lashes out at losing presidential candidate

LA Times Blogs: Richard Fausset. MEXICO CITY -- One of Mexico's largest retailers has been unwillingly dragged into the hullabaloo over just how dirty the nation's recent presidential election was, and now it's yelling "ya basta!" -- enough already -- and accusing the runner-up of promoting protests at its stores that have been marked by "aggressiveness and violence."

The retail giant Soriana, which operates more than 500 grocery stores, quickie marts and Wal-Mart-style megastores, became entangled in the country's impassioned postelectoral narrative soon after the July 1 vote. At that time reports surfaced that supporters of the victorious Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, were jamming the outlets' aisles in the hopes of redeeming prepaid Soriana gift cards that the PRI had allegedly given them. Read more.

Mexico: The Campaign Continues

NACLA: Fred Rosen. Confusion reigns in the post-campaign. The months following Mexico’s presidential election are turning out to be as conflictive and as revelatory of Mexican politics as the election itself. One of the nasty debates of the post-campaign centers around the testimony of a Mexican-American public relations hustler named José Luis Ponce de Aquino.

The PR man claims to have been approached by campaign functionaries of the victorious (maybe) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and hired to use his many media contacts and his own media/public relations firm, Frontera Televisión Network LLP, to promote a favorable image of PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto in the United States. For his services, says Ponce de Aquino, he was offered (in writing) the outsized sum of $56 million dollars, but was never paid. Read more.

Mexico's PRI says left violated campaign finance rules

Fox News Latino: Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's campaign should be investigated for using grassroots organizations as "parallel structures" to evade campaign finance rules, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said.

Both the leftist Progressive Movement and its presidential candidate received funds that they hid from election officials, "triangulating them via grassroots organizations, such as Austeridad Republicana and Honestidad Valiente, among others," PRI leaders said in a press conference on Monday. Read more.

Mexico’s conservative party joins leftists in demanding probe of presidential winner’s funding

In the latest development of the ongoing legal challenge to this month's presidential election, runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Gustavo Madero, national chairman of the PAN, have jointly accused the victorious PRI of laundering millions of dollars through front organizations to fund Enrique Peña Nieto's campaign and are demanding that the election be annulled.

AP: MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s conservative National Action Party said Thursday it has “strong and conclusive evidence of the use of illicit funds” in the campaign of the winner of the July 1 presidential election, Enrique Pena Nieto.

National Action leader Gustavo Madero said his group is joining with the country’s leftist parties to demand that electoral authorities investigate the use of pre-paid debit cards purportedly used by Pena Nieto’s campaign to distribute an estimated 108 million pesos ($8.2 million). That would be about a third of all the money he was legally allowed to use in the race. Read more.

Posted by Ryan Gentzler. 

Mexico's old ruling party falls short of majority

In the lower house of Congress, it is expected that 240 seats will go to the PRI and the Green Party, 10 to the New Alliance Party, 114 to the PAN, and 101 to the PRD, although the PRD is also allied with smaller parties (together the progressive party could have 136 seats). Final totals are still to be determined in a few weeks.

AP: MEXICO CITY - Mexico's old ruling party and its allies appear to have fallen just short of a majority in both houses of Congress, electoral authorities said Tuesday, giving smaller parties the potential of leveraging their swing votes and increasing the likelihood that parties will try to poach congressmen from rivals.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held Mexico's presidency for 71 years, has been declared the winner of the July 1 presidential elections, marking its first return to the presidency since 2000. Read more.

Analysis: Mexico ruling party seeks new direction after election debacle

The socially conservative PAN party will be redeveloping its party strategy as it defines its relationship with the other parties.

Reuters: Mexico's conservative National Action Party made history when it swept to power in 2000, ending 71 years of one-party rule. But it now faces an identity crisis after a punishing presidential election defeat.

Josefina Vazquez Mota, the PAN's candidate, came in a distant third with just 25.4 percent of the vote on July 1, and the party will have far fewer seats in Congress.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled for most of the 20th century and was ousted 12 years ago, was the beneficiary the PAN's collapse and bounced back to power. Read more.

PAN and PRD prepare to take action against the PRI

El Universal: Americas Program Original Translation
See Spanish Original.

The meetings between the national leaders of the PAN, Gustavo Madero, and of the PRD, Jesus Zambrano, intensified as the two parties prepared to formalize a joint action against the PRI.

As El Universal published in its July 2 edition, the two parties jointly designed a plan to oversee 150,000 polls, which allowed them to gather the reports of irregularities.

In a statement, Madero said he had met with Zambrano and that he “is open to dialogue.”

He confirmed that he has proof that on election day there was “a sophisticated vote-buying operation in which PRI governors are implicated, in which they approved the indiscriminate use of public resources to promote candidates.”

He urged all political actors to review electoral legislation carefully in order to put an end to the practices of the past which impede the full legitimization of electoral results.

The panista reminded that several challenges have been presented, including significant examples such as the distribution of Banca Monex cards to PRI operatives, especially to its representatives, both general and at the polls, who were registered with the IFE.

For Madero Muñoz, in the case that the electoral authorities validate Peña Nieto’s win, they would only give legality but not legitimacy to the presidential election, due to the deep issues with the way the PRI obtained thousands of votes.

He indicated that the PAN will maintain its firm position so that everything can be clarified and confirmed, and that in the future the illegal handling of resources and vote buying will not be repeated.

A call to join forces
Senator-elect Javier Corral, in a statement, called on the PAN to join forces with the left to clean up the election: “It is very important to follow up on the complaints presented to authorities regarding the abuses of the governors, the bias and manipulation of the pre-election polls by various media outlets, the outrageous expenditures by Peña Nieto’s campaign, and the buying and coercion of votes.”

Corral Jurado said that the PAN and the PRD should consolidate a common agenda in Congress to tackle the inequity that continues to spread in the electoral process, as well as the creation of a working accountability system for local governments.

Translation by Ryan Gentzler.

Mexico should look into obstacles to press coverage of elections

Fox News Latino: Mexican authorities should investigate "the obstructions, censorship and intimidation that may have affected the coverage and observation of the electoral process," the Paris-based press-rights group Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said Wednesday.

"Right up to the eve of election day, the campaign was marked by numerous attacks on journalists and also on observers, bloggers and campaigners for electoral transparency such as members of the #YoSoy132 collective," RSF said in a statement.

Sunday's presidential election was won by Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, who garnered 38.14 percent of the vote, according to the final preliminary results released by the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.

"Much of the violence has been attributed to supporters of the three main candidates, starting with backers of the man who has been proclaimed the winner, Enrique Pena Nieto, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that led the country continuously from 1929 to 2000. The fact that the candidate of the left, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has asked the Federal Electoral Institute for a recount could further increase tension," RSF said. Read more.

The struggle for territory in San Sebastián Bachajón is once again met with repression

Desinformemonos: Americas Program Original Translation by David Feldman
See Spanish Original.

The indigenous peoples of San Sebastián Bachajón once again tried to exercise their rights over their territory by taking back the ticket booth at the Agua Azul waterfalls; the government’s response was the same as always: repression and paramilitaries.

Chiapas, México. This past June 19, members of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondón Jungle (SDSL in Spanish) of the San Sebastián Bachajón Ejido (SSB) in Chiapas took back the Agua Azul Waterfalls ticket booth. The response from the government of Juan Sabines’ Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was the same as always: a violent and repressive removal and a flagrant violation of the human and collective rights of the members of the San Sebastián Bachajón cooperative.

Taking back what is legitimately theirs, and solidarity with national demands
During the early morning of this past June 19, members of San Sebastián Bachajón, tired of suffering so much injustice, entered the “Agua Azul Waterfalls” complex to take back the ticket booth located at the entrance. As a native tzetzal village in the region, the booth rightfully and legitimately belongs to them, but Juan Sabines’ government in Chiapas took it from them on February 2, 2011. At the same time, the members set up a roadblock near Agua Azul, where they distributed flyers and demanded the release of three political prisoners from the San Sebastián Bachajón cooperative, as well as the immediate release of Alberto Patishtán Gómez and the Zapatista Francisco Sántiz López. This action took place within the framework of a disjointed national and international action called for June 19, with the goal of demanding the release of Alberto Patishtán Gómez—on the twelfth anniversary of his detention—and the rest of the political prisoners in the country.

One of the San Sebastián Bachajón cooperative’s spokespeople explained during the mobilization: “This current movement is part of a process that we are carrying out to take back a part of the cooperative’s land, which the government has been trying to violently strip us of since last February 2. And so we as organizations and members of the San Sebastián Bachajón cooperative want to retake this piece of land that Juan Sabines’ government wants to take away from us.

Mancera wins Mexico City mayoral election

Fox News Latino: Miguel Angel Mancera, candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, Workers Party, or PT, and Citizens Movement coalition, won the Mexico City mayoral election by a wide margin, the Federal District's Partial Electoral Results Program said.

Mancera, a former district attorney, won 63.64 percent of the vote in Sunday's election.

"I am not going to let you down," Mancera said in a brief press conference, adding that he would keep implementing policies that benefit the sprawling capital's residents. Read more.

Reports of voting irregularities

The early returns from today's election have included reports of voting irregularities and controversy, but the special federal investigative unit for electoral crime FEPADE will withhold information until all votes are counted. Parties have accused one another of fraudulent practices, and incidents have been reported throughout the country. Voting irregularities, however, have not been considered widespread.

The El Paso Times reports that Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizen Movement), a left leaning political party coalition, says it has "received reports of electoral volunteers destroying ballots and [of] urns that had been previously filled with votes." In Monterrey, armed men stormed a polling place in Monterrey and stole the urns of votes there, according to La Jornada (original in Spanish). Terra reports (original in Spanish) that members of the left leaning PRD have accused members of the center-right PRI of giving out favors and a PRI sympathizer reported that the PVEM (Green Party) bought votes in Cuernavaca. According to El Universal (original in Spanish), FEPADE, the governmental elections oversight agency, has opened 62 investigations, focused mainly in Mexico DF, Chiapas, Hidalgo, and Veracruz, corresponding to 605 specific complaints of vote buying and illegal campaigning.

Articles:
Mexican election: Irregularities at Juarez voting boothsreported (updated)
El Paso Times: JUAREZ - As Election Day moves forward, political party representatives are reporting irregularities at the voting booths that range from missing and destroyed ballots, previously filled urns and offering money for votes. Read more.

Urns robbed at voting station in Monterrey
La Jornada - Spanish original only.

FEPADE reports first electoral irregularities
Terra - Spanish original only.

FEPADE opens 62 investigations from the day
El Universal - Spanish original only. 

Posted by Ryan Gentzler

Mexico’s middle class, a key group in presidential elections that old guard is poised to win

While the middle class once voted against the PRI, their dissatisfaction with the PAN party of the last 12 years and the economy and insecurity, has changed their political stance. To take another class perspective, USA Today in "Leftist candidate gains among Mexico's well-off" shares the perspective of the upper class and their support behind Obrador to end corruption and create better transparency. Read more of this story here. 

AP: NAUCALPAN, Mexico — Middle class voters like Gerardo Olivo helped drive Mexico’s ruling party from power 12 years ago, ending its seven decades of rule.

Now the same voters seem ready to bring back the party everyone knows as the PRI.

Olivo, a 33-year-old financial trader, said he voted for the now-governing National Action Party in the past two presidential elections, hoping it would transform Mexico. He’s fed up now, though. “My position today is to go back to the PRI” he said. “I already tried the other party because it had promised change, but now I realize there was no change, or the changes were already there.” Read more.

Mexico City different from rest of country

News sources this week have been commenting on how different the politics are between Mexico City, which is markedly more leftist, more socially liberal, than the rest of the country. In Mexico City, the PRD party has been successful since mayoral elections were made possible in 1997 and Miguel Angel Mancera leads significantly in polls for the election on July 1st, the date coinciding with the presidential election.

Fading political left still thrives in Mexico City:
Associated Press: MEXICO CITY – When it comes to the presidency, Mexico's voters are fed up and ready to throw the ruling the party out. But in the nation's capital, the progressive island known as Mexico City, they're about to hand the leftist political party that has ruled since 1997 an election-day valentine. Read more. 

Mexico election diary: The growing metropolitan divide
The Economist: WITH election day looming, it looks as if the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is likely to win the presidency by a fairly wide margin. But a different party is expected to win an even more crushing victory in Mexico City. Miguel Ángel Mancera, the mayoral candidate of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), is predicted by most polls to win about two-thirds of the vote, an extraordinary share in a four-horse race. Read more.