Leftist candidate worries Mexican elite

This sounds alarming... I get very little of the background though.

Is any of it related to AMLO and the elections at all, or has it proceeded completely separately?

That Ruiz sounds like a bad guy.

No good guys here.

It has nothing to do with (july 2nd) federal elections.
Ruiz is a cronie of the most corrupt part of the PRI gang. A little fascist wannabe.
There are a lot of hands into the Oaxaca teachers' movement, which happens every year, but this time it got ugly. Among those hands: José Murat, former governor and State "boss": Ruiz himself who had some of the leaders on his private payroll, but they asked for more; Elba Esther Gordillo, the powerful leader of the teachers union. They all have been surpassed by the movement. The PRD is there, the ERP guerrilla is there, some local businessmen are there. And also the followers of losing candidate in Oaxaca Gabino Cue (he was in a huge PAN-PRD-others alliance against the PRI-Greens).
All the strictly union demands have been met, but they ask for no less than the governor's resignation, and the teachers don't control the movement anymore.
The dismissal of Ruiz should be the obvious choice... except that: 1) if the governor resigns before December 1st; that is, before he reaches 2 years in power, new elections have to be held, and the PRD is a possible winner; 2) if he resigns after December 1st, then a governor ad interim is chosen by the (PRI controlled) local Congress of Oaxaca, for the next 6 years. The bet of both PRI and PAN is to hold Ruiz by the strings until December, and then drop him.
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As an aside, fresh "dissident" teachers movements are rising in 4 states. One of the states, Veracruz, is governed by a corrupt PRI politician. The other 3 are governed by anti-AMLO members of PRD (Michoacán: Lázaro Cárdenas Batel; Chiapas: Juan Sabines; Guerrero: Zeferino Torreblanca). Sounds suspicious.

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BTW, I was supposed to be in Oaxaca today, at an independent congress on "Media & Culture", but it was suspended.

Yeah, the only guy that isn't there seems to be Fox... which BTW I dont think that he would like to see Ruiz down. Its my idea that if the movement makes Ulises go, it will set a precedent that might motivate AMLO's followers even more on pressing Calderón.

Curiously, if I remember correctly, all the governors recently met and agreed on keeping Ulises in his chair, even the ones from PRD.

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I thought that Ulises was just as a bad governor as the next one, but apparently he ordered police forces to get inside an important newspaper and shoot the whole thing down. The paper closed just because the declarations it made against him.

Báez should correct me in case I messed it up.

Not exactly "polices forces shooting the whole thing down". The paper was critical of Ruiz, so he managed to have a fake PRI-controlled union make a strike. When the paper lawyers got a judge to order a recount of unions, the "strikers" tore down the offices and broke the presses.
The newspaper went back to work, and once it was machine-gunned, and a reporter got a bullet in her leg.
This is only one of Ruiz's bad deeds. He has about ten that big.

As I said before, Fox's inaction has to do with their willingness to wait 'til December. Electoral calculations have gone awry in my opinion.

Wheee!!! Zermeño suggests that Ulises should consider leaving his seat, and the PRD echoes that idea!

Wow, this politicians change their mind so suddenly...

The entanglement is because of Ulises Ruiz's reluctance to ask for a license. If he does, everyone is served: PRI won't lose the governorship, APPO will claim a victory, PAN and government will "solve" the problem without reppression and PRD can say that their attitude was key.

What they really need is to force Ruiz to ask for a license ("hacerle manita de puerco"), and they need the PRI for that.

If these were the old PRI times, the President would have called the governor into his office, and the governor would come out with his resignation. No democracy, but social peace. Foreign analysts called it "the perfect dictatorship".
That happened in Oaxaca in the 70s. The governor's last name was Aquino. Also in Chiapas in the 90s.

Yeah! And if he would have said "no", The-One-Who-Mustn't-Be-Named would have placed some corpses in Ulises' trunk.

Bueno pues ahora si la cosa esta dura eh Báez! Vislumbro un panorama oscuro... estos APPO's si van en serio.

Y que buena lana le dieron a nuestros fantasticos miembros del Tribunal eh! Los que decidieron por Calderón. A nosotros nos toca bono sexenal también?

Me, I've no useful comment, just interested -



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6170240.stm

Pro-reform Mexico cabinet named

Mr Calderon is keen to push ahead with reforms
The President-elect of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, has announced his first cabinet appointments, including the key economic portfolios.
Mr Calderon appointed several pro-business economists and academics to important financial positions.

Correspondents say the appointments are aimed at showing Mr Calderon is determined to push ahead with reforms.

On Monday, the defeated left-wing candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, launched a "parallel government".

Mr Calderon said his finance minister would be Agustin Carstens, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Crucial reforms

Mr Carstens left his job as IMF's deputy managing director last month to work with Mr Calderon, and will now lead efforts to push through market reforms and create more jobs.

The president-elect's team will also include an academic, Georgina Kessel, who has been named as energy minister, and Sduardo Sojo, who is the head of public policy in the outgoing government of Vicente Fox and will be the minister for the economy.

Analysts say these pro-business appointments are expected to help the president-elect effect crucial reforms in taxation, energy and labour - which his predecessor Mr Fox failed to get through Congress.

Mr Calderon is due to take office on 1 December.

In the elections held in July, he defeated his rival by less than a percentage point.


Mr Lopez Obrador insists he won the July election.

Mr Lopez Obrador claims he was a victim of fraud in election - a view shared by millions of Mexicans.

He launched a "parallel government" on Monday in Mexico City and held an unofficial swearing-in ceremony.

'A thorn in the side'

But some of his supporters think his alternative inauguration is ill-advised and politically irresponsible.

Mr Lopez Obrador was "sworn in" by Senator Rosario Ibarra, a human rights activist and member of his party, who placed a red, green and white presidential sash across his shoulders.

"I pledge to serve loyally and patriotically as legitimate president of Mexico," Mr Lopez Obrador said before an estimated 100,000 supporters in the Zocalo, Mexico City's main square.

"I pledge to protect the rights of Mexicans and to defend Mexico's sovereignty and patrimony, and ensure the happiness and welfare of the people."

Mr Lopez Obrador promised he would do everything he could to hamper the government of Mr Calderon.

Although he has enough of a support base to be able to create a mass civil disobedience movement, some analysts think that his campaign will be, at best, a thorn in Mr Calderon's side.

The BBC's Americas editor Will Grant says many Mexicans are tired of conflict and long for a return to normality.

Calderon has payed his debt to the ones who helped him in his campaign. His cabinet has certain ultraright men that lack "social sensibility" to deal with current affairs. Government Secretary (Secretario de Gobernación) Ramírez, and Health Secretary, Angel Cordoba, who has proclaimed against the "second day pill", stem cell development, and assisted reproduction. The right side is retarded. This 6 year process hasn't even started and it already sucks.

Got to agree with el_pohl.
The economic and security cabinets are barely OK. The social cabinet is deep blue (only PAN members). The political cabinet has one hard-liner (Ramírez Acuña), one loyal calderonista who says he wants to be feared (Martínez Cázares) and a virtual unknown who really didn't expect to be the foreign relations secretary. (gasp!)

We have "Doctor Yunque" (Dr. Anvil) at Health. Big setback from Julio Frenk.
At Education, we have Josefina Vázquez Mota (I would have preferred her elsewhere in the cabinet): as head of Public Education we have gone from Vasconcelos, the author of the classic "Ulises Criollo", to Yáñez, author of "Al Filo del Agua", arguably the best Mexican novel in the XX Century to good old Josefina, author of the self-help bestseller "Please God, make me a widow".


The cabinet is blue. A sign that Calderón was not able to make the alliances he needs so much. Not a good sign.

What do you all think will happen at tomorrow's inauguration? There was a fight yesterday between the leftists and rightists at the national congress battling to control the speaker's platform.

IMHO it's a desperate attempt by the PRD of a pseudo-legal coup d'etat.

They want to boicott Calderon's oath, and then say he didn't comply with the Constitution.

It's odd, the PRD is more and more isolated in the public opinion, which is shifting rapidly to the right, by the PRD's seemingly suicidal manouvres. Perhaps they want to fulfill AMLO's prophecy of a right-wing Calderón government.

... And what will be Fox's last action as a president? Pray in the "Basilica de Guadalupe" to thank someone something at 10:00 PM! We should be the ones thanking...

And how, in an unprecedented and merely SYMBOLIC act, hidden in "Los Pinos" (our version of The White House), and a rushed decision, Calderón receives the title of President.

This event and nothing are both equal. But we still need to see how he will swear in front of our nation (rendir protesta?) tomorrow, with the congressmen... what a shame.

The Congress event went swifter and easier than thought.

The midnight act was symbolic. And the military taking part of that ceremony was also symbolic.

... lucky Calderón, the PRD forgot about the back door.

(from your sad emoticon)

Pohl, did you really wish the PRD was able to block Calderón's oath?

Do you realize what that would have meant?

Do you really think they "forgot" the flag door?

Nah, not really, I was being silly. It would have only delayed and bleed the process even more.

I'm going to think out of my mind right now. My dad just received a HUGE *SS book about Pancho Villa and says that the same opinions that Madero received (indecisive, weak) one could attritube to Fox; and the ones that Pancho Villa had in the beginning, before making him a "hero", could match Andrés Manuel. The problem with el Peje is that, IMHO: he is not a politician ('cause he just wont dialogue), and he is not an all out revolutionist.


One thing is true! Neither football players (soccer) nor Congressmen know how to fight.

Fox is an admirer of Madero, and the similarities are obvious, except for the height... and that Madero was murdered... and that Madero didn't have a bothersome wife.

Villa and AMLO... hmm
Villa lived in a country with practically no institutions; AMLO wants to destroy them.
Villa had guts, AMLO has a temper.
But yes, some similarities strike.