Mexican Elections - July 2012

Are the policies of Calderon unpopular, these days? Does any candidate support them?

According to polls, Calderón's policies divide the population by halves (the part against him just a little bit bigger).

His law-enforcement "War on Drugs" policy is widely critisized as being too dependant of sheer force, using the military as police and having made way too many casualties, among both criminals and plain civilians: 50 thousand over his 5 year tenure.

The strictly pro-Calderón candidate lost the PAN primaries.
Both Peña and Vázquez Mota say that there must be some change in policy, in order to bring the military "back to the barracks".
Peña says there must be more resources poured into intelligence and anti-money laundering operations and less into buying more weapons for the Army and Navy.
AMLO also says he'll put more emphasis fighting money laundering and adds that he will retreat the military in six months time.
Both Peña and AMLO took one of (losing PAN precandidate) Santiago Creel's ideas: a unified anti-druglords command.
Quadri favors legalization of drugs.

On economic policy, Vázquez Mota is for continuity and blames PRI for not passing needed reforms: cuts, privatizations and labor reform; Peña has a bit of a reformist stand on energy -joint ventures with private partners- but is verrry cautious on most other matters (verbally he speaks about a fiscal reform, but does not specify yet), while AMLO pushed fiscal reform to cut loopholes for the rich.

I continually see the PVEM's adds about medicine vouchers in which they say "if you are with social security, popular, or with ISSSTE and they don't give you your medicine's, let them pay for them.

What is that all about?

What's popular?

Who do YOU support? And why?

Yes, that was my question too.

Will be reading with interest.

There are 3 kinds of social security in Mexico.
IMSS - Mexican Institute of Social Security - Every private employee and his/her immediate family is "derechohabiente" ("rights-haver").
ISSSTE - Institute of Social Security at the Service of State Workers - Every public employee and his/her immediate family is a "derecho habiente".
Seguro Popular - Popular Insurance - Social security for those that are employed by themselves or in the informal economy: professionals, peasants, taxi drivers, street vendors, artisans, etc.

The PVEM (fake greens) are for privatization of education and health care. Like some US Republicans (I think) they favor the government giving vouchers for private school and health care, instead of a public service. Their ad plays with the fact that some times some (free) prescription drugs are lacking at IMSS, ISSSTE or Popular clinics. So they say that the government must give a voucher to exchange at a private drugstore.
Should I add that the brother of the party leader is the owner of one of the biggest drugstore chains?
They are the party I loathe the most.

Who do I support, dlowan?

Hmmm, that's a toughie. I haven't decided, really.

6 years ago I voted for the Socialdemocrats, but now they're dead and gone.

One thing for sure, I'll split my vote. One thing not sure is that I may decide to annull one of my 6 ballots.

I will certainly not vote for Josefina Vázquez Mota, the PAN candidate. IMO, Calderón has been below average President, and his party deserves a punishment. Plus I know Josefina, a shallow person. About 15 years ago she wrote a self-help book: "My God, Make Me a Widow, please!". A widow of envy, a widow of pride blah blah blah. My wife worked for her for a few months in 2002, and what she talks about is not good.
I will probably not vote for AMLO. I think he has the best program, but he is the least able person to carry it on. He's an authoritarian in his heart, and Mexico was lucky he didn't win in 2006. With the world financial crisis he would have probably radicalized his positions and become a new Chávez. Now he has mellowed a bit (he talks of a Loving Republic), but deep inside he's still a Tropical Messiah.
I may vote for Peña Nieto as a lesser evil. His party is known as corrupt (but both PAN and PRD have proven to be corrupt too), but they were certainly more efficient than PAN in keeping the social peace and helping the economy grow. Income inequality has worsened with PAN. Peña himself is a shrewd politician, but with very little culture and is somehow authoritarian. I would like to know better about his links with the Mexican TV duopoly, which I think is a constant menace to democracy.
I could throw my vote with Quadri, a somewhat serious ecologist, but I wouldn't like to help the all too powerful teachers' union, and its leader, the maquiavellical Elba Esther Gordillo (known a Doña Macabra - Madame Macabre).

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On another post I will talk about elections for Mayor of Mexico City, the second most important position in Mexican politics.

This is confusing to me since I'm used to one ballot, sometimes very large, sometimes with instructions for different categories ("choose one", for example).
So, you get six ballots to fill out with the same printout on each of them? I figure that's not what you mean...

Thanks for opening this thread, Fb.
Fascinating choices. I see why you would split (just not getting how you do that).

We get 6 different ballots, that go in 6 separate boxes.

3 are Federal:
One is for President
One is for Senators
One is for Federal Representative (diputado)

And 3 are local:
One is for Mayor of Mexico City (or State governor)
One is for delegate (a kind of borough submayor Mexico City) or mayor (States)
One is for Local Rapresentative (diputado local)

So it's quite easy to split. You simply vote for a different party on each ballot.

Ah! got it.

This is how the mayoral elections in Mexico City look like.

The PRD-PT-MC candidate is Miguel Mancera, 45, former attorney general of the city. He doesn't belong to any political party, and boasts the noticeable drop of criminality during the last few years. His problem is that he has had to give power parcels to the populist "tribes" of PRD.

The PRI candidate is Beatriz Paredes, 58, she's a former governor of the state of Tlaxcala (with very good results), and former President of her party. Her problem is that the PRI party in Mexico City is in shambles -it has lost almost every single election since 1997- and was overtaken by the worst interest groups (garbage collectors' union, street vendor organizations). Paredes is single, advocates women's and gay's rights. but has never been open about her possible lesbianism.

The PAN candidate is Isabel Miranda de Wallace, 60. Mrs. Wallace came to public fame about ten years ago, when she overrided an inept investigation over her son's kidnapping and murder, and didn't stop until all the criminals were captured and sentenced. This brave woman and entrepreneur has no political experience, no clear ideas, dissents with PAN on basic things (she's pro-choice, the party is pro-life; she's for gay marriages, the party is against them) and has proven a terrible speaker.

PANAL has no official candidate yet. It looks like it will be Rosario Guerra, about 60, a former reppresentative with the PRI. She broke with the party in the city a few months ago, after she was allegedly beaten a a group of thugs of the garbage collectors union.

Any other leftist candidate would have had me voting for Paredes (who did a very good job at Tlaxcala), but now she has to work to convince me she's a better option than Mancera. I'm leaning for the candidate of the left, with some space for Paredes to break in.

So far, the polls have Mancera at 46%, Paredes at 23% and Miranda de Wallace at 14%. The rest, undecided.

How's it going?

I am very confused because in the poll ,I'm used to one ballot paper in different types, there are some candidates , but the right selection is difficult.
So, you get six ballots with the same printout on each of them? I figure that's not what you want to mean...

Thanks for opening this thread,

We get six ballots, six different papers, one for each race.
One ballot for President, one for Senator, one for the federal Chamber of Representatives, one for Mayor/Governor, one for Delegate (vice mayor), one for the local Chamber of Representatives.
Each paper goes into a different box. Ballots and boxes have a color stripe according to the race.
Daltonics manage the color thingie by reading the name of the race in both ballot and box, as my friend Roy had to explain when we mocked him about it.
There are also ballots for the blind, in braille. I guess somebody tells them in which ballot you must stuff each vote.

We are in the "intercampaign" phase now, an absurdity when we have candidates but no campaigns "outside of the party".

So everybody is focusing about blunders.

PRI's Peña Nieto biggest blunder was his inability to name the 3 books that have influenced him the most. He named the Bible, but then -remembering his party is not religious- he added "of course, I haven't read all the Bible". Then he cited a book by novelist Carlos Fuentes, but attributed it to essayist Enrique Krauze. All sorts of jokes about his ignorance followed.
When he took oath as the party's candidate, he used a teleprompter. Jokes went on about his incapability to say: "Yes, I do" without help.

PAN's Vázquez Mota has been the most hit during this time.
First, an ill-organized event at Estadio Azul (Blue Stadium) where she swore as the official candidate of her party. She arrived late, people were made to wait and, as she was speaking, many of them started to leave the stadium... their buses were about to leave.
Then, their foes digged and found an article in which Vázquez Mota praises former Chilean dictator Pinochet's economic policies, which supposedly built the basis for Chile's later development (and big income distribution divide).
Finally, their foes digged her B.A. thesis and underlined a phrase against the National University, UNAM: "a monster in which more than half a million students do not care about their professional preparation". Now, UNAM is Mexico's biggest public university, every single Mexican Nobel prize winner studied there (and the world's richest man, too), it is considered the best university in Latin America by all rankings (the Financial Times, included) , while her university (Iberoamericana) barely makes Mexico's top 20 and her career is ranked lower than UNAM even in Mexico's right wing paper Reforma's classification.
To undermine Vázquez Mota even more, a young member of her party, during a "Youth Parliament" session, attacked the left saying that their candidate is mediocre, because he got his title 14 years after he entered the University. Vázquez Mota got hers 15 years after her admission. The dumb kid got angry during and yelled "we cannot tolerate faggot marriages" (approved in leftist-governed Mexico City).

PRD's López Obrador has also made blunders. He confided he doesn't have now the same energy as 6 years ago. Now everybody is saying that he's gotten old (he's only 58). Then he declared that if he losses he'll go to La Chingada (a curse word, with the equivalent of going to hell). The reaction was: he knows he'll lose. Finally, to prove he is healthy and not old, he played a baseball game with former all-stars. He proved he can bat and field, but wore the Number 3 jersey. "3 for third place", was the reaction.

The polls are basically the same: Peña Nieto 47, Vázquez Mota 30, López Obrador 22, Quadri 1.

In Mexico City, left-wing candidate Mancera received the endorsement of the masons (who usually go PRI) and the industrialists (who usually go PRI or PAN). He's on a roll.

This is the latest campaign bus by one of the political parties (the ultra right party) running in our next provincial election. Her husband bought her a new bra to celebrate.. lol

Good one!

Latest poll (Parametría), for Mexico City.
(As I've posted here and elsewhere, Mexico City is waaaay more left-leaning than the rest of the country):

For President:
AMLO (PRD + "Progressives"): 46%
Peña Nieto (PRI + "Greens") : 39%
Vázquez Mota (PAN Conservatives) : 13%
Quadri (New Alliance): 2%

For Mayor:
Mancera (PRD + "Progressives"): 51%
Paredes (PRI + "Greens"): 34%
Miranda de Wallace (PAN Conservatives): 13%
Guerra (New Alliance): 2%

Campaigns are now at full gear.

While Peña Nieto (PRI) and AMLO (Progressives) have cruised through their events, presenting different platform points (yesterday, they coincided on talking about agriculture, since it was the anniversary of the assassination of Zapata), Vázquez Mota (Conservatives) has done blunder after blunder (she said she would "promote" money laundering, while she meant to combat it; she stopped at a highway-side popular market only to be jeered and practically thrown out, she reshuffled her team by stuffing it with Calderonistas, including the President's sister and brother in law and has asked for a truce within her own party), and Quadri (New Alliance) has developed his program, which seems a sort of strange big-tax Libertarianism, if this can be (he's for privatizing Pemex, the big oil company, as well as most public services, such as jails and electric supply, supports VAT for food and medicines -which are exempt here- and an end for all subsidies for oil, gas and electricity, and to invest all the extra revenue in health and education).

Ads are on. The best one by AMLO ("After 70 years of corruption -PRI governments- and 12 years of disappointment -PAN governments-, it's time for a true change"), the cutest ones by Quadri (a lookalike "school teacher" is telling off his stupid students, each of them lookalikes of the other candidates, while in a road trip through Mexico), the worst ones, by Vázquez Mota. She just changed her tone and goes directly into Peña Nieto's throat, stating that he's "a lier". We expect Peña Nieto to retaliate. The "no-aggression" campaign on radio and TV lasted two weeks. Mud-throwing has started... again.

The latest tracking poll by Mitofsky:

Peña Nieto 48%, Vázquez Mota 28%, AMLO 23%, Quadri 1%

The latest tracking poll by GEA/ISA:

Peña Nieto 52%, Vázquez Mota 24%, AMLO 22%, Quadri 2%

According to Mitofsky, Peña Nieto and Vázquez Mota are tied in the very Catholic Bajío region (our version of the Bible Belt), while Peña Nieto leads easily in the North and South-Southeast region and has only a slight lead over AMLO in the Central region (Mexico City and surrounding states).