It was one more defeat for the once powerful PRI who held the reins of power in Mexico for more than 76 years. It also shows the Mexican people are “thinking” instead of voting for those who promise the moon and in the end, give them a moon pie Forsaking the red crocodile-skin vest of his hard-fought gubernatorial campaign, gambling tycoon Jorge Hank Rhon yesterday conceded defeat in Sunday’s election, saying “the trends obviously are not in my favor.” Hank, 51, the former Tijuana mayor and a member of Mexico’s once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, gave no indication of his political ….Read More
Aug 212006
21/08/2006
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A few questions concerning moments in Mexico’s political and social life have been haunting my thoughts. I often find myself wondering how Mexico’s people will see these events 70 or 80 years from now. Will the current political situation be a mere transfer of power, or will this reshape the social landscape of the country? Today, corruption continues to be widespread in Mexico, a byproduct of social stagnation of a very hierarchical culture — the track record is not good enough yet to fully endorse institutions in that country. The rhetoric and the calls for civil disobedience from leftist presidential ….Read More
Aug 182006
18/08/2006
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Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s fiery presidential candidate, has a tough pill to swallow.He lost the July 2 presidential election by a margin of less than 1 percent to National Action Party candidate Felipe Calderón. López Obrador has contended there was electoral fraud. The loss has led to massive protesting that until recently has been peaceful. Regrettably, those protests have turned violent. Monday, federal police used tear gas to break up a throng of demonstrators blocking the entrance to the Congress building in Mexico City, injuring up to 30 people. Seething tensions point to more violence, as López Obrador has ….Read More
Jul 052006
05/07/2006
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MEXICO CITY — Over the past 16 years, this nation’s electoral institutions have gone from toothless watchdogs to respected pillars in a blossoming democracy. But the electoral system now faces its biggest test as arbiter in the close presidential vote. On Sunday night, the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, refused to call a winner on grounds that no party had a definitive lead. Allies of Felipe Calderón, who’s ahead by 1 percentage of the vote in preliminary results, were furious, accusing electoral officials of flouting their responsibilities. “They wimped out,” Jose Luis Luege Tamargo, a Cabinet minister and Calderón supporter, ….Read More
Jul 052006
05/07/2006
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MEXICO CITY — Vowing they won’t let the ruling party cheat them out of victory, angry supporters of populist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador took to the streets Tuesday in what likely was the first wave of larger demonstrations to come. Chanting and sign waving came on the eve of a review of preliminary, but far from complete, election results that showed the conservative ruling party’s Felipe Calderón was ahead by about 1 percentage point in an election in which about 42 million votes were cast. Tensions were ratcheted up with the news that the preliminary tally made after ….Read More
Jul 042006
04/07/2006
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MEXICO CITY — After Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute announced that there would be no official winner in Mexico’s presidential election until later this week, Felipe Calderón confidently took to the stage at his party’s headquarters, rattled off a list of exit polls and declared that his National Action Party had won six more years in the presidency. Then he and his collaborators closed themselves in the party’s war room for five nail-biting hours, watching preliminary results trickle in — just to make sure that the exit polls that gave the conservative candidate the win were right. By 3 a.m. Monday, ….Read More
Jul 042006
04/07/2006
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Leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused the Federal Electoral Institute of manipulating the preliminary vote tally. He demanded a recount to take place before officials announce a winner. “They aren’t registering the numbers properly and it’s affecting us,” López Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, said at a news conference late Monday at his campaign headquarters. With 98 percent of the votes counted, he trailed Felipe Calderón, of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, by about 1 percent, or nearly 400,000 votes. An official declaration of a winner was postponed Sunday night until after a previously scheduled ….Read More
03/07/2006
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MEXICO CITY — Shouts of “Felipe” and “We won” echoed through the spacious halls of the National Action Party’s central headquarters, but nervousness reigned here as exit polls and preliminary results didn’t guarantee that the conservative candidate would win. And when the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, announced late in the evening that the election was too close to call and that a winner wouldn’t be announced until Wednesday, there were whistles of disapproval and sighs of complaint. But that didn’t stop Felipe Calderón or former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or ….Read More
03/07/2006
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CHIMALHUACAN, Mexico — Tempers were flaring in this mud-choked slum on the outskirts of the nation’s capital, where rival party representatives traded allegations of vote-buying and fraud Sunday. The competition to be Mexico’s next president is particularly fierce in this sprawl of cinderblock shacks that’s a historic bastion of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. But in recent years, the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, has built a strong following among the working-class residents. The PRD candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, needs the vote of places like Chimalhuacan to beat his conservative rival, Felipe Calderón. But the PRI, whose candidate ….Read More