JURASSIC FALL-OUT FROM THE MEXICAN ELECTION: THE INOSAUR IS BACK - BUT FOR HOW LONG?

>
>FROM: JOHN ROSS
> 011-5255-5510-1213 X102
> 206-419-7957 (after July 18th)
> johnross@igc.org
> Blindman's Buff #250
>
>JURASSIC FALL-OUT FROM THE MEXICAN ELECTION: THE
>DINOSAUR IS BACK - BUT FOR HOW LONG?
>
>MEXICO CITY (July 16th) - Nine years ago on a
>sultry July morning, Mexicans woke up and
>discovered to their great amazement that the
>Dinosaur that had hunkered down at the foot of
>their beds for 71 years was gone. This July 6th,
>when Mexicans rose in the morning, the Dinosaur
>was back.
>
>In the famous short poem by Augusto Monterroso,
>the Dinosaur is the PRI - the Institutional
>Revolutionary Party - once the longest-ruling
>political dynasty in the known universe that
>controlled the destiny of Mexicans from the
>cradle to the grave for seven interminable
>decades until it was dislodged from power by the
>right-wing PAN party in the July 2000
>presidential elections. In its unslakable
>thirst for power, the PRI committed unspeakable
>crimes against the Mexican peoples, stealing
>elections from the most humble city hall to the
>presidential palace, jailing and torturing and
>executing those who stood in its way, and
>emptying out public treasuries in an unmatched
>kleptocracy that was a legend throughout Latin
>America, "the perfect dictatorship" Latin
>American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once dubbed
>it (for which the PRI had him tossed out of the
>country.)
>
>"Have we Mexicans lost our memories and our
>minds?" asks Sylvia Insulza from behind the
>counter of her newspaper dispensary in the old
>quarter of the capital. Tears of frustration
>crystallize in the corners of her eyes.
>
>The depth and breadth of the PRI victory July
>5th is nothing short of stunning. From a
>distant third place finish in the 2006
>presidential fiasco in which the rightist PAN
>stole the election from Andres Manuel Lopez
>Obrador (AMLO) and his left-wing PRD party by
>.57% of the popular vote, the PRI ("proven
>experience and a new attitude" is its current
>campaign slogan) took 37% of the total ballots
>cast, nearly doubling its votes three years
>back, and taking control of congress for the
>first time since 1997. The once-upon-a-time
>ruling party's alliance with the so-called
>Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM - see
>sidebar below "THE GREEN PRI") will give it 259
>seats out of 500 in the lower house, an absolute
>majority. In nine out of 31 states, the PRI won
>every office up for grabs - federal
>congressional representatives, local congresses,
>and municipal officials, a "carro completo" or
>"full car" in the Institutionals' curious
>lexicon.
>
>The Dinosaurs also proved triumphant in five out
>of six governors' races, winning two statehouses
>in which the PAN had resided for 12 years. Only
>in the northern border state of Sonora where the
>PRI governor was seen as complicit in the tragic
>incineration of 48 babies in a Hermosillo day
>care center a month before the election, was the
>PAN able to squeeze out a victory in an election
>in which the PAN and PRI candidates were
>cousins.
>
>Moreover, the PRI won cities like Naucalpan, an
>upper middle class Mexico City suburb the
>right-wingers have controlled since the 1980s,
>and the nation's second city, Guadalajara, which
>the PAN has owned since 1995. In alliance with
>the Mexican Green Environmental Party, the PRI
>won its first elected office in Mexico City
>since 1994. Although the left PRD maintains
>control of the nation's capital, the Party of
>the Aztec Sun does so by a greatly reduced
>margin. Whereas the PRD registered 51% of the
>vote in Mexico City in 2006, three years later
>it weighs in with just 29%.
>
>But Sylvia's tears of frustration may soon dry.
>Whether the Dinosaurs are really back or just
>staying overnight (in Jurassic time) is not yet
>clear. Mid-term elections are referendums on
>the sitting president and his administration's
>management of the country and July 5th
>represented a crushing vote of no confidence in
>Felipe Calderon on whose watch the economy has
>tumbled into freefall - "growth" in 2009 will
>measure a negative 8%, the worst slide since the
>Great Depression of 1929-32. Calderon, who
>campaigned as the "President of Employment" has
>presided over the loss of 2,000,000 jobs. The
>president's ill-advised war on the drug cartels
>has soaked the country in blood - over 12,000
>lives have been lost - and fueled corruption and
>human rights abuses on the part of the military
>and the police. Calderon's panic-driven
>handling of this spring's Swine Flu "PAN-demic"
>kicked the bricks out from under the tourist
>industry, the nation's third source of dollars,
>and his arrogant imposition of candidates in the
>July 5th vote-taking angered and turned many in
>his own party against him.
>
>Ceding the PRI a 10-point advantage (37% to 27%)
>in the national vote and the loss of congress to
>the Institutionals' absolute majority
>effectively shuts down Calderon's legislative
>agenda. Indeed the PANista may be the weakest
>president in a century - no Mexican president
>since the 1910-1919 revolution has ever ruled
>with the opposition holding an absolute majority
>in the lower house. Felipe Calderon will be a
>lame duck for the next three years - in real
>terms, his presidency ended July 5th.
>
>One of the first casualties of the debacle was
>PAN party president German Martinez, a creature
>of Calderon, who tossed in the towel the morning
>after his party's most devastating defeat since
>its founding in 1939. Similar demands for the
>resignation of PRD president Jesus "Chucho"
>Ortega, who orchestrated the left party's worst
>showing since 1991, are legion.
>
>The Party of the Aztec Sun plummeted from 38% of
>the national vote in 2006 when Lopez Obrador was
>at the top of the ticket, to just 12% three
>years later and its congressional delegation was
>decimated, retaining only 71 seats out of the
>126 it held in the outgoing legislature. Cities
>in the misery belt girdling the capital such as
>Nezahualcoyotl, Chalco, and Ecatepec with a
>total population of 6,00,000 that have been in
>the PRD's pocket for years fell to the
>Dinosaurs.
>
>Despite hanging on to its hegemony in the
>capital, the PRD lost four out of 16 delegations
>or boroughs for the first time since it took
>power here in 1997 although the leftists still
>have a commanding advantage in the local
>legislative assembly. In the battles for the
>delegations, the PAN picked up three of the
>wealthiest enclaves in the city and the tiny
>Party of Labor won the megalopolis's biggest and
>poorest demarcation - Iztapalapa - by ten points
>after Ortega and his co-conspirators persuaded
>the nation's top electoral court to substitute
>their candidate at the last minute for one
>supported by Lopez Obrador.
>
>AMLO responded by mobilizing his considerable
>base, including the "Adelitas", hundreds of
>working women dressed in the outfits of women
>soldiers during the Mexican revolution, who last
>year fended off the privatization of the state
>oil monopoly PEMEX with a campaign of civil
>disobedience. "Adelitas" like Berta Robledo, a
>retired nurse, descended on Iztapalapa walking
>the precincts day after day to expose the
>flimflam and support Lopez Obrador's candidate,
>a local soccer coach everyone knows as
>"Juanito." Now, with Iztapalapa under his belt,
>AMLO, the once-wildly popular Mexico City mayor
>who still styles himself as "the legitimate
>president of Mexico", has forcibly demonstrated
>that he is still very much a factor in Mexican
>electoral politics.
>
>Despite the PRI Dinosaur's big numbers, it was
>the Party of No that was the hands- down winner
>July 5th. Absenteeism hovered between 55 and 60%
>in the south and center of the country and in
>northern states like Chihuahua and Baja
>California where Calderon's drug war rages, only
>25 to 30% of the electorate went to the polls.
>A national movement to cast protest votes or
>deface ballots with no-holds-barred slurs
>against all the political parties, gained
>resonance throughout the country. The number of
>"votos nulos" cast doubled from 3% in 2006 to a
>shade under 6%, and in Mexico City, the "votos
>nulos" multiplied by 400% to 10 to 13% of the
>vote. This reporter observed one disgusted
>voter in a neighborhood polling place here in
>the old quarter of the capital angrily ball up
>his unmarked ballot and cram it through the slot
>in the "urna."
>
>Because a recount must be ordered when the
>number of votos nulos exceeds the margin of
>victory between the first and second-place
>finishers, ballot boxes had to be opened and
>counted out vote by vote in as many as 27,000
>out of 140,000 polling places. Indeed, the
>number of votos nulos - 1.8 million (a half
>million cast in Mexico City and Mexico state
>alone) - establishes the Nulos as the fifth
>electoral force in the country behind the PRI,
>PAN, PRD, and PVEM but ahead of the PT,
>Democratic Convergence, New Alliance, and the
>Social Democrats (who, failing to win 2% of the
>national vote, lost their registration.)
>
>On the Mexican political calendar, the
>conclusion of mid-term elections signals the
>kick-off for the next presidential race three
>years down the pike in 2012. The big pro-PRI
>turnout puts the Dinosaurs in the driver's seat
>to recover Los Pinos, the Mexican White House,
>which it held hostage from 1928 through the new
>millennium.
>
>At this fledgling stage, the PRI frontrunner is
>Mexico state governor Enrique Pena Nieto, a
>short, pretty boy politico with deep pockets, a
>trademark pompadour, and a glamorous soap opera
>star (Angelica Rivera AKA "The Seagull") on his
>arm - Pena Nieto, who Lopez Obrador labels "a
>male Barbie", is a darling of Mexico's
>two-headed television monopoly, Televisa and TV
>Azteca.
>
>The governor's resounding sweep of Mexico state
>municipal (97 out of 125 city halls) and federal
>elections in the nation's most populous and
>economically active state puts him double digits
>above his closest rival, Manlio Fabio Beltrones,
>the leader of the PRI's senate delegation, and a
>Mafia-like political boss who is often mocked as
>"Don Beltrones." The "Don" is a longtime crony
>of the much-reviled Carlos Salinas, the former
>president who fell into public disgrace after
>his brother was imprisoned for masterminding the
>gangland execution of a political rival. The
>return of the Dinosaurs marks a possible revival
>of Salinas's fortunes. The bald-pated,
>big-eared former chief of state was pictured
>depositing his ballot in a large, front-page El
>Universal photo July 6th just to remind readers
>who exactly was back.
>
>Also in the mix for the PRI nomination is the
>voluminous party president Beatriz Paredes, a
>Dinosauress whose wardrobe contains a different
>hand-made Indian huipil (a loose-fitting
>muumuu-like gown) for every day of the year.
>
>To add to Felipe Calderon's woes, the PAN has no
>"bueno" or fair-haired boy in the pipeline to
>succeed him as president - his young protégée,
>Juan Camilo Mourino, the recently-appointed
>Interior Secretary, was killed last November in
>a mysterious Mexico City air crash after
>returning from overseeing drug war operations in
>the north. The PAN's affairs are managed by a
>council of aging elders who appear reduced to
>recycling bland party hacks like Senator
>Santiago Creel, hardly one of the premium
>numbers on Calderon's cell phone dial.
>
>Who the PRD nominee will be depends largely on
>how long Jesus Ortega's chokehold on the party
>is allowed to continue. Bloodied by the July
>5th debacle, the chief Chucho seems determined
>to compound his party's misery by expelling
>Lopez Obrador from the PRD on the grounds that
>he violated the by-laws by backing the PT in
>Iztapalapa. AMLO remains the most popular - if
>polemical - politico in Mexico with powers of
>convocation that far exceed any other party's
>front-running candidates. Having insured that
>the PT and Democratic Convergence retained their
>registration by endorsing their candidates,
>Lopez Obrador guaranteed himself a place on the
>2012 ballot even if Ortega is successful in
>expelling him from the PRD.
>
>El Peje as he is affectionately called will no
>doubt face-off against his successor as Mexico
>City mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, a strapping,
>well-spoken but distinctly uncharismatic
>politician, for the votes of Mexico's leftists
>in 2012.
>
>Despite its abysmal showing July 5th, the
>Mexican Left by whatever initials it shows
>itself is hardly down for the count. The PRI's
>overwhelming win at the polls only represents
>16% of 77,000,000 registered Mexican voters when
>absenteeism and votos nulos are factored into
>the July 5th results. The Dinosaurs staged a
>modest congressional comeback in 2003 mid-term
>elections only to be steamrolled by AMLO and
>Calderon in 2006. Failure to cope with
>continuing economic and social turmoil and the
>predictably polluted performance of PRI elites
>like the Salinas clan that seem to exult in
>political mayhem and armed thuggery, are bound
>to revive left fortunes in the next three years.
>
>According to evolutionists, the dinosaurs went
>extinct 60,000,000 years ago either because a
>giant asteroid plunged into the Atlantic Ocean
>off the Yucatan peninsula lowering world
>temperatures by ten degrees, or because climate
>change so thinned out the oxygen count that the
>dinosaurs' huge respiratory systems no longer
>functioned. As climate change once again
>threatens Planet Earth, the comeback of the PRI
>dinosaurs will, no doubt, be short-lived.
>
>Sidebar -- Sidebar -- Sidebar -- Sidebar--
>
>THE GREEN PRI
>
>The Mexican Green Ecologist Party or PVEM, which
>will partner with the PRI to form an absolute
>majority in the lower house of congress (259 out
>of 500 seats), is a wholly-owned subsidiary of
>the Gonzalez Torres family. Founded by father
>Jose Gonzalez Torres, a wealthy construction
>tycoon, with ample investment from brother
>Victor, the king of the largest chain of generic
>pharmacies in Mexico, the party is presided over
>by Jose's young scion, Jose Emilio Gonzalez,
>dubbed "El Nino Verde" or "The Green Child."
>
>Although the PVEM touts its roots in Mexico's
>growing environmental movement - the elder
>Gonzalez Torres was a player in the failed fight
>to shut down Laguna Verde in Veracruz, Mexico's
>only nuclear power plant, and active in protests
>against Mexico City's killer smog in the late
>1980s - the Gonzalez Torres clan soon discovered
>that juicy government subsidies to Mexican
>political parties could pump up family fortunes.
>
>First aligned with the leftist PRD and
>subsequently with the right-wing PAN, Gonzalez
>Torres had his sights set on becoming
>environmental secretary after the election of
>PANista Vicente Fox in 2000 but when he was
>passed over for the post, he delivered the PVEM
>to the PRI with which he has lined up ever since.
>
>Having abandoned its environmental pretensions,
>the only green the Mexican Green Environmental
>party has pursued in recent years is the long
>green of filthy lucre. In 2004, the Nino Verde
>was secretly filmed soliciting a seven-figure
>bribe from developers keen on trashing the
>coastline of Caribbean Cancun. Scant days
>before the July 5th shakedown, a PVEM senator
>was nabbed at a Chiapas airport with a million
>pesos bundled up in his carry-on baggage.
>
>The centerpiece of the Green Party's July 5th
>campaign was the restitution of the Death
>Penalty, which earned it the condemnation of
>European-based environmental parties and the
>PVEM has been excommunicated from the Global
>Greens Network. During the run-up to the recent
>elections, political cartoonists substituted a
>vulture for the party's colorful emblem, a
>toucan.
>
>As the PRI's partner in crime in the new
>legislature, re-introducing the death penalty
>will be the big enchilada on the PVEM's plate.
>The "Greens" are also expected to lobby for
>rescinding electoral reforms that deprived
>Televisa and TV Azteca of millions in political
>advertising revenues in the prologue to the July
>5th mid-terms - the reforms were introduced
>after the broadcasting giants abused the use of
>television and radio spots in the 2006
>presidential election. To this end, Ninfa
>Salinas Pliego, daughter of the owner of TV
>Azteca, has been named to head the PVEM bench in
>the incoming congress.
>
>FIN
>
>John Ross will present IRAQIGIRL, the diary of a
>teenager growing up under U.S. occupation in
>northern Iraq, July 30th at Modern Times
>Bookstore, 888 Valencia Street in San
>Francisco's Mission District (7 PM.) Ross
>developed and edited the Haymarket Books volume.
>These contributions will be issued at 10-day
>intervals while the Blindman is in California
>for medical tests.