Leftist candidate worries Mexican elite

Pohl, I don't know where you saw "hundreds" of irregularities.
Almost 12,000 prescincts were recounted (for the third time) and the difference changed one hundreth of a percentage point (from .058 to .057). On only 240 of those 12,000 prescincts the difference on the recount was over 4 votes.

"Proceso" is not, was not and was never intended to be a "neutral" magazine. Denounce, not objectivity, is the motor. You gotta understand the history of that magazine (perhaps an article by Claudio Lomnitz in Excelsior, last august 14th, may help).

Do not buy, i repeat, DO NOT BUY AMLO's intent to dictate what the media has to say.
What do you want us to say after the latest Ahumada leak? That it proves a fraud?
Ahumada's video was taken by the Cuban police. They were asking him about domestic Mexican politics, while he was being held for alleged violation of Cuban migration laws. Ahumada declared, when he was taken back to Mexico that the taped interrogation was rehearsed several times.
Which Ahumada do you want us to believe? The one being interrogated by the Cuban police or the one in a Mexican jail? And why hasn't the Mexico City government allowed a press interview with Ahumada? Several journalists have asked for one, and it has always been denied.
Now, let's suppose Ahumada spoke happily to his Cuban captors, and that all he says is true. What would that prove? That several years ago, some PAN and government officials were willing to buy from the businessman tapes in which AMLO's people were taking bundles of kickback money from him, and used it later against AMLO.
I know former secretary Santiago Creel well enough to affirm that he wouldn't have thought of such a scheme (he's neither too bright or too bold), yet the Cuban tapes were darts directed against him. Why? Because he was the probable PAN candidate. Creel lost the primaries, and the Cuban scheme failed.
I do realize PAN Senator Diego Fernández de Cevallos is a perverse politician. He could've done the deal with Ahumada.
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And, dear pohl, behind all this you can see politics at it's essence. Mountains of crap.
Where did the Ahumada money came from in the first place? How did this young Argentinian refugee build an empire?
It came from older brother Ahumada, leader of the Montoneros guerrilla. Part of the [ransom, "revolutionary tax" and bank robbery] money stayed in Argentina, but guerrillas need to diversify their portfolios, too. Part of it went to younger brother in Mexico and part went to Cuba. Guess where most of the money is now.
And Castro's government was certainly unconfortable with the stance of President Fox about human rights; for the first time in history, Mexico voted against Cuba in Geneve. So Fidel made a deal with AMLO (dumping, by the way, his old pal Salinas de Gortari, who lived in Havana part of his self-imposed exile). The interrogatory was tailor-made for AMLO.
Now Havana strongly denies any intervention in the leak. Of course, Calderón had sent friendly signals to them and, after Fidel's illness, Cuba does not want to open a front with one of the key nations for their future.

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nimh, I believe pohl, Pantalones and myself do not represent the mood in the country. We're quite civilized in our discussions. At least on my part of the country, families are bitterly divided, anger is common and a lot of civil and democratic conviviality is being lost. Those -like myself- who were left in the middle, are being pushed by the quarreling sides.

I misjudged AMLO. He's far worse that I had thought he'd be.
He's looking more and more like a Neofascist to me.
But hell, perhaps that's because of the mood.

Some feedback about the Mexico-Cuba collision:

Mexico and Peru Withdraw Ambassadors From Cuba
By GINGER THOMPSON

Published: May 3, 2004 - NYT


PANAMA, May 2 - Mexico withdrew its ambassador from Cuba on Sunday after a weeklong exchange of angry diplomatic dispatches that have pushed the relationship between former allies to its lowest point in recent years.

In a televised address, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez accused the Cuban government of words and actions that infringe on Mexican sovereignty.

Interior Minister Santiago Creel said two Cuban government officials in Mexico had been found "carrying out activities incompatible with their status," an expression widely understood to denote spying.

"Mexico does not want to change its friendly relationship with a nation of people that historically has been its brother," Mr. Derbez said. "But let it be clear that an act of the magnitude of the one by President Castro and of his officials in Mexico cannot be ignored."

The Mexican officials were referring, among other things, to a May Day speech delivered Saturday by President Fidel Castro of Cuba. In the speech, Mr. Castro attacked Mexico for voting in favor of a United Nations resolution that criticized Cuba's record on human rights.

"It hurts profoundly that the prestige and influence gained" by Mexico "in Latin America and the world for their impeccable foreign policy, born from a true and profound revolution, has been turned to ashes," he said.

Late Sunday, Peru also withdrew its ambassador from Cuba, citing similar remarks by Mr. Castro about Peru's vote in the same speech.

Mexico's withdrawal of its ambassador is only the latest in a series of incidents that have strained relations between Cuba and Mexico since Vicente Fox became Mexico's first opposition president four years ago.

In March 2002, Mr. Castro stormed out of a meeting of world leaders, attended by President Bush, in Monterrey, Mexico. Several weeks later, Mr. Castro played a tape on national television of a private telephone conversation in which President Fox had urged him to avoid contact with Mr. Bush.

New trouble between Cuba and Mexico began brewing last week, when Mr. Castro deported a businessman wanted in Mexico for his connections to a scandal that has exposed corruption in the government of Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico City.

Mayor Lopez has accused the federal government of staging the scandal to tarnish his image. On deporting Carlos Ahumada, Mr. Castro issued a statement that supported the mayor's conspiracy theories against the Fox government.

On Sunday night, leaders of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party urged the government to avoid deepening the dispute.

"This is a delicate moment in which diplomacy and good will ought to prevail," said Francisco Mora Ciprés, a member of Congress.

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A brief comment:

What were the Cuban diplomats doing?
They were planning the Ahumada exposure with PRD notables.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah! I dont know what to believe anymore!!!



New elections with new candidates, yay!!!

nihm, the El Universal poll is consistent with others, and reflects the mood in Mexico City, AMLO's stronghold.

In the elections in Mexico City's Federal District, AMLO got 58% of the vote, Calderón. 27%, Madrazo 9%, Mercado 4%, Campa 1%.
If you add up "Greater Mexico City", AMLO won with 53% of the vote.

In a similar national poll (by BGC), 64% of the population considered there was no fraud, vs. 30% who consider there was.

98% of Calderón voters, 72% of Madrazo voters, 66% of Mercado's voters and 13% of AMLO voters say there was no fraud.

There's a national plurality, 48% in favor of the vote-by-vote recount.

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Pohl, in politics, believing is not enough. Doubt is a virtue.

Ok OK OK. So I open today's paper (well, not precisely) and AH! Manuel Espino, the President of PAN calling their loyal voters to vote for the PRI in Chiapas elections! What the hell is going on! Come on, don't tell me its not "AMLO V.S. Everybody Else" here. And it has been that way since "El Desafuero".

Chiapas IS an important battle for AMLO indeed. If the PRD wins - which was the logical thing to happen 2 weeks ago - and if for some reason Ulises Ruiz IS overthrown - which should have happened 2 years ago - AMLO's movement will gather new strength. Not a good idea for Espino it seems.

Now, regarding the "hundreds" of irregularities (and you are not gonna like my suggestion, hehe), lets check out "La Jornada". I know, its a leftist newspaper just like "Milenio" plays right side, but it did mention quite a number of "weird findings" when the 9.0X% of the ballots where opened.

López Obrador might be a crazy man, but at least he doesnt have a double sided moral as some significant PAN members. IMHO.

I happen to be one of the founders of La Jornada, not even a founder... a "convocante", part of the original 60. Was purgued in '88. Sold my stock 4 years ago. It's by far the most biased newspaper in the country, and I think it's the only openly pro-ETA daily in Latin America.

Chiapas? You're a bit late on your news. The alliace was a week ago, elections were held yesterday.
Everybody against AMLO? Nah! Everybody against the incumbent.
Do you remember, pohl, which parties supported the present governor of Chiapas? Let me remind you: PRD, PAN, Greens, PT, Convergencia.
Governor Salazar leaned "left" only recently. His former secretary of governance, Emilio Zebadúa -the original PRD candidate 6 years ago- was this time candidate for Nueva Alianza, and also declined for the PRI candidate.

And, to make things worse, it's a virtual tie in the governor's race:

Chiapas prep

The PRD-led coalition is leading by a razor thin margin: 48.4% versus 48.2%... that's exactly 2,405 votes, with 94.3 of the prescincts in.

I know, but we get the Reforma on a second hand basis, so it wasnt really "today"... it was friday's... or saturday's...

Damn it, Chiapas is going to be a mini reflection of the Presidential run.

This is so F-ed up, what can we do to save our country Báez???

Our counry is quite safe, IMHO.

Not long ago, such electoral results would have ended in violence.

This is something I think the younger generation has a lot to learn from. Democratic elections are a relative novelty. And, as I have stated before, we have more locks against fraud than almost every other country in the world. I lost the link eons ago, but according to international electoral experts, the only system that works better than Mexico's (in the sense of preventing fraud) is Germany's.

This cost A LOT of effort to my generation of democracy fighters.

My posts on this matter have been written also with my heart. But my heart is not at all Panista blue; it's the heart of a guy who lived his adolescence in a jail disguised as a country, fought for working democracy (party building in the times of semi-illegality wasn't an easy task), achieved it... only to find a demagogue bringing us back (in our collective perception) to the old suspicious times, when fraud was the rule.

That might be allright, but you don't represent the margined people of Mexico, the lowest of social classes, the repressed, the discriminated, the exploted, the resentfull. The ones that haven't seen a change or a benefit from the so called democracy.

I hope that you have Lorenzo Meyer in good terms! And hopefully you can take a look at this if you haven't yet.

Los Ríos Subterráneos - Lorenzo Meyer

(always listening, in case you guys think you are talking with no interest from hereabouts)

Oh Osso you should Google-translate that link, Meyer's opinion is always an interesting one.

As an outside no-nothing, I don't know that I'm for either guy, and was veering from afar for awhile for amlo, but am over it now - and had listened to FB on him before the election and all this hazzerai.

I have my own rather odd point of view, which has to do with the life of a city. I am a perplexing sort of lefty in that I didn't like universities being shut down back in the old days, especially my own (UCLA - I was from there and worked there at the time) but also in general. Same with cities.

But, yes, I'll go get the translation.




Re life of a city, you can just guess what I think about US and Iraq.

Neither do you, who whine about gas prices.
Nor AMLO.



WTF do you know?
You were not even born when I was organizing agricultural workers (jornaleros) and creating new boroughs with people displaced from Operación Cóndor (you don't even know what Operación Cóndor was, do you?), as a cadre of a semi-legal left wing party.
You were not even born when we organized a national strike against De la Madrid and the IMF, and the leading union in that movement was totally and utterly destroyed.

And where was freaking AMLO then?
He was composing the Anthem of the PRI.
Did you know that he's also a composer?



You're totally right, here.
I don't represent the resentful.
Exit-polls show one thing. The pessimistic and resentful are with AMLO.



"So called" because it has not benefited them?
Do you say "democracy is in the program" and mean that methods don't count?
Do you prefer an authoritarian rule that would (nominally) benefit them?

Democracy is what we have to change society, if we want to change it for the better.

Well said, fbaezer. You never fail to increase my respect for you.

Ah, the not so mature and the fiery "politician" in me tried to emulate Meyer's words, and echo some of the ideas of the people that stand beside my opinion, albeit sometimes rash. Yet, all those words, do they not define the poorest people in our society? And did AMLO did not receive the votes from this people? At least from a demographical POV he did.

Of course you are right, I dont represent them, and AMLO, well... he might not have a big apartment, and his Tsuru might be a decoy... I guess you don't have to live like them to represent them.

But don't take my words so seriously Báez! Im 20 years old and 6 ago I didn't care much for this. You actually DID something for the poor people in the past, but the rest of them yet expect - and deserve - their messiah.

Two more things, pohl:

Democracy is about reppresentation.
On the 2th of July, AMLO reppresented the hopes of almost 15 million citizens: among them many of the poor, the marginalized, the exploited, and some middle classes.
On the very same day, Calderón reppresented the hopes of other 15 million citizens: among them many of the poor, marginalized and exploited, and some middle classes.
What one cannot do is to say that votes for the rightist don't count the same, because he basically offered continuity of the existing, socially unjust, status quo. If people were mistaken, it's their sovereign decision.
In a democracy, sovereignity resides on the people, on the citizens.
It bugs me a lot to hear AMLO talk about "the people" and mean something abstract. The people and the voters are one.


Messiahs are not needed in politics
Politics is about participation, a social construction of today and of what we, collectively, want for tomorrow.
Mexican political culture received venom in the PRI years: "the President is everything", "The government gives stuff to the people". We had a new monarch every six years, hoping he would be benign.
AMLO's political culture is, exactly, the old PRI culture ("nacionalismo revolucionario"). His language has a stench from the 70s, where there was only one candidate for the presidency, López Portillo.
We don't need papá-gobierno (nanny-government) to give us material stuff in exchange for our surrender of our souls, our brains and our own political power.


And sorry if I took you too seriously.
But I do take my sons (25 and 21) seriously on what I believe to be serious matters. (Y echo un chingo de relajo en todo lo demás )

Woah Báez! First of all Fox declares to a foreign media de "Calderón won the presidency", and now AMLO... will proclaim president based on article 39 of our Constitution?????

This reminds me of my elementary school history lessons regarding the mexican revolution. I'm a tad worried now, this man doesn' seem to stop.

Should Calderón do something? Does he have the power of calling out the masses? Or at least the anti-AMLO syndrome could draw the people...

Well, you know, Fox is not very good at controlling his mouth (hence the famous saying of his spokesman "What Chente meant..."), and backed yesterday. He's a champion of blunders.

As for AMLO, it was easy to see it coming.
A National Democratic Convention, made with delegates chosen by a commision appointed by AMLO will probably declare AMLO (who else?) "Legitimate President of Mexico".

Calderón, I guess, is waiting for the tribunal to finally finish its task. Then, he'll move.
I know he played with the idea of a countermarch in Guadalajara, and wisely discarded it. Panistas are not the masses movilizing kind, they rely on a mass of individual votes. Even in the early 80s, the left outmarched them.

I don't know what will AMLO try to do. But the 16th of september is far away, as politics move in our country.
And the outlook doesn't look good for AMLO:

1) The PRD congressmen and women elected on the 2nd of July have: a) received their credentials, blowing apart the hardliners position; b) chosen their parlamentary coordinators: in the Senate, they chose César Navarrete, a member of the New Left "tribe" (followers of Jesús Ortega), while AMLO's favorite, Ricardo Monreal, gathered only 2 votes; in the lower house, Jesús González Garza, who was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas spokesman, was chosen by a wide margin over Miguel Angel Navarro, AMLO's favorite. González Garza has gone further and says that if the lower house gives him the presidency of the political coordination council , he will put the presidential band on Calderón.
I've been told that Ortega (who controls the majority of PRD parlamentarians) has said, off the record, that his group has deposited a lot, that if it weren't for AMLO, he'd be right now major elect of Mexico City, and that it's withdrawal time (in the banking sense of the term).
Amalia García, who controls other blocs of the party, has publicly declared (Aug. 16, at President Fox's residence) that "the democratic path of plurality must be cleared respecting the adversaries... we must build bridges with dialog, once and again, with sense and serenity".

2. Mexico City's major, Alejandro Encinas, has declared that there will be both the "Grito" ceremony on september 15th and the military parade on september 16th.
Logistically it's impossible to have the military parade and the PRD blockade of the roads the parade is going through. So it's a sign he'll be willing to dismantle the camping, and get rid of the mess he got himself into (a Cardenista seen as AMLO's lackey).
And the Secretary of Defense has declared that of course there will be a military parade on Reforma, on September 16th.

3. The number of people at AMLO camps has decreased noticeably. Since monday, they retired from some key crossroads (I can drive to work again); as you pass by, all you hear is loud music from the loudspeakers.

4. I personally know some AMLO followers who were hardline enough to believe in the fraud theory. Now they say he's gone crazy, and say the movement is doomed.

All this said, a desperate man can be dangerous, yes.

Well, its official. Calderon won the elections and will be President on the 1st of december.

Important to note that the TRIFE made enphasis that an "important" number of anomalies existed, and they did mention the black propaganda, but considered that it didn't affect the process as much to void the whole thing.

Its my opinion that yes, the media (radio talk shows more than others), some newspapers, businessman (Jumex, and Sabritas of course! Did you see the "clean hands" spot?), the president, and even "El Kikin Fonseca!" where against AMLO, and that it affected society enough to win those 233k votes that made a difference. But well, although I didnt like Calderón, I wasnt really THAT sure of who would make a better president for ME, a middle classed man.

Is AMLO really like Hugo Chavez by the way? Probably... but we might never know.

Stay tuned for what happens on the 15th of September! This can get nasty, right Baez?