I can’t post this!
On the plus side, Mexican campaign law prohibits negative advertising directed at an opposition candidate. On the minus side… the major media are extremely reluctant to investigate the lives of the candidates they support.
I can’t publish this (and I have no opinion as to the accuracy of the information), but the U.S. snarky political site Wonkette.com can put together some of the less publishable — but circulating (outside of Mexico’s mainstream press) —background on the Obama Administration’s preferred president-elect of Mexico:
The more we learn about Mexican president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, the scarier things get. Behind the Pompadour and circumstance, there lurks a dark and nasty side to the pretty-boy president-to-be.
Gay? Murderer? The Telenovela Life of Mexican President-Elect Enrique Peña Nieto
Two weddings and a protest
I really don’t watch enough television to say why the personal lives of Eugenio Derbez and Alessandra Rosaldo are something all that newsworthy. Derbez (whose real name is Eugenio Gonzalez Derbez: his mother is the well-know film star of the 1940s and 50s, Sylvia Derbez) produces some Televisa comedies, and has acted in a couple of telenovelas and sit-coms, and I guess promoting his long courtship of Ms. Rosaldo has been a staple of TV fan magazines for the last couple of years, and we are talking about people who are selling themselves as a product.
But c’mon… despite the elegance surrounding the event (the Church service being held in Mexico City’s Regina Coela, a gem of Churrigueresque ecclesiastical architecture, and the music was nice… and I guess there is some vicarious thrill in watching TV stars and their moms and dads in formal-wear… the wedding I attended yesterday — at a beach palapa, where a white beach shirt with no lettering or picture on it is what passed for overly formal-ware and the hoc service (the judge had a last minute meeting out of town, and the legal marriage had been performed earlier in the day) did not feature a symphony orchestra and wired for sound priest, but was shouted over the banda group entertaining in the next palapa, had a little more class. Or at least I can relate to a wedding where at least I know the bride and groom, in person.
Which meant watching the two actors’ wedding broadcast live on Televisa was all the weirder. Not that I set out to watch it, but I went out to eat this evening, and it was playing at the local taquetería, and walking home, I noticed about half the neighborhood was watching the broadcast (nothing tacky about my neighborhood… but most of us don’t have air conditioning, and are too anti-anti-social NOT to be out in the street … so when it’s hot, people t set the TV out in front of the house, or in the front window, and sit outside to watch, and I get to watch them watch).
One gets the sense that the live telecast was either a sneaky way for Televisa to broadcast religious programming on prime-time television — something of a gray area in Mexican law. Supposedly no religious programming is broadcast, but besides a few evangelical “infomercials,” there are telenovelas with scripts and stories drenched in Catholic piety. Televisa regularly pushes Church-sponsored events, or sponsors — and gives endless coverage to — religious spectacles like the recent tour of an effigy of the late Pope John-Paul II . Given the know proclivities of the Azcárraga family for support for the more conservative strains within the Roman Catholic Church, it’s not an unfair assumption to imagine that Televisa simply saw a chance to push the envelope on religious programming and ran with it.
On the other hand, given that Televisa is under increasing scrutiny for NOT broadcasting any real news… like the mounting protests against the network”s role in the recent presidential election, and the street protests against both the network and what is seen as the imposition of the candidate they backed and who received the most votes in what is seen as a tainted election, there is also the sense that the network is desperate to avoid anything even slightly controversial. It’s not much discussed outside Mexico (or even in Mexico), but one reason Televisa would much prefer a PRI presidency is that both PAN and the Citizens’ Movement coalition (PRD-PT-MC) were pushing to break Televisa’s stranglehold on television broadcasting. With a PRI majority in congress, bills to create a third network and open up channels for local and alternative broadcasters might be pushed back, or overridden.
Whether that was uppermost in the protesters minds, they did manage to shut down the wedding broadcast, at least temporarily. Televisa had “technical difficulties” during the live program when Derbez and Rosaldo, leaving the civil wedding for the religious ceremony (only civil marriage is binding and legal in Mexico) they were met with protesters demanding “schools, not telenovelas!” and, as usual, denouncing the presumed electoral fraud and Enrique Peña Nieto.
Those “temporary technical problems” left out what happened next. Debez briefly addressed the protesters, saying, “I’m with you. I didn’t vote for Peña Nieto either!” The only class act in a tacky production.
A wedding where everyone comments on their surprise at seeing the bride in a dress (and a lovely dress it was) … and there was no undercurrent of making a political statement or putting on a show for the masses … now that’s class!
Free market victory
(Fisgon, La Jornada)
Is that a pistol in your pocket…?
Why do I get the feeling the blonde said “show me what you got,” to Juan Pablo Franzoni Martínez, one of the PRI’s “Dynamic Youth” (Juventud Dinámica). Whether she meant for him to whip out his pistol and throw plastic chairs at peaceful protesters walking past the Sumarento restaurant in downtown Xalapa (about half a block from a police station) isn’t clear, but the officers of the law may have had that in mind when they apparently searched for the drunken fool’s huevos.
Juan Pablo Franzoni Martínez is facing charges of armed threats and carrying an unlicensed weapon. I don’t think they can charge him with being a pendejo, but perp walked in his tighty-whities, at least subjects him to national mockery.
Playing with my little cars
“The gas station down the street, I remember, blew up. I heard the machine guns and explosions outside, but I was so young, around 9 years old. When you’re that young, you don’t know. I was afraid, but not that much afraid. I didn’t care about anything but playing with my little cars and fighting with my sister and brother.”
WOW… just wow. Joseph Santoliquito, interviewing bantam-weight mixed martial arts professional fighter Ivan Menjivar for Sherdog, “The global authority in mixed martial arts,” writes one of the best personal stories of the Salvadorian civil war — or life in any war zone.
A few alternative candidates
The “voto nulo” campaign never really amounted to much, but there were those who registered their dissatisfaction with the official candidates in one way or another:
And, there were some who just had other plausible leaders in mind…
And some with some really, really scary idea on who should run the country:
.
Don’t like “yosoy#132”? Well…
Young Mexicans in the streets with placards and bullhorns might be a tad annoying at times, but there are alternatives they could be using to push for political and social change:
Ain’t nothin’ like a (primera) dama
Assuming the TEPJF (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación) doesn’t do anything radical and find that some of the myriad complaints in the July first election were serious enough to force annulling some of part of the results (which it’s perfectly capable of doing), on the first of September, there will be a president-elect. And, there will be the inevitable official portrait of the President-elect. Tasteful, I’m sure.
Mexico’s next Eleanor Roosevelt, Pat Nixon, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Nellie Taft won’t require an official portrait… Angélica Rivera’s face (etc.) already graces so many of Mexico’s finest… auto graveyard offices, mechanics’ workrooms, tire repair centers excusados, creepy teenage boy’s school lockers …
Theatre of the absurd
As Soriana-gate continues to unfold, PRI spokesperson Eduardo Sanchez has an explanation for what happened:
… Sanchez claimed that supporters of López Obrador had taken hundreds of people to the stores, dressed them in PRI T-shirts, given them gift cards, emptied store shelves to create an appearance of panic-buying, and brought TV cameras in to create the false impression that the PRI had given out the cards.
“They mounted a clumsy farce, a theatrical representation in which they dressed people in PRI T-shirts,” Sanchez said.
And they used to say Lopez Obradór was nuts for pointing to plots involving something crazy like slanted media coverage by Televisa.
For the record,
Cesar Yanez, the spokesman for López Obrador’s campaign, denied the PRI accusation.
“That’s absurd. I don’t think even they believe that,” said Yanez.
The worst are full of passionate intensity
I don’t for a second believe that there is any Platonic “neutrality” in the media anywhere, so I normally expect some sort of bias — as least in terms of what editors (or publishers) consider newsworthy — in even the best reportage. For the not-best…
The [Mexico City] News … once upon a time a reputable newspaper:
AMLO insults Mexican voters
BY LETICIA PAULA CRUZ
Rumbo de México
MEXICO CITY – Progressive Movement presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the Mexican public did not support him, opting to vote for what he called a corrupt regime instead.
He said that those who voted for Peña Nieto were privileged, and that “they bet on and backed a corrupt regime. I know that what I’m saying is harsh, but it’s the truth.”
At a press conference on Monday, López Obrador met with Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) members who, together, insulted the media, saying that information had been manipulated.
López Obrador’s speech brought to mind his post-election antics in 2006, after the electoral authority announced President Felipe Calderón’s victory.
Despite the fact that López Obrador signed the Federal Electoral Institute’s (IFE) “Civility Pact” and agreed to respect the outcome of the election, his response suggests that he will wait until every last vote is counted before admitting defeat.
He said that he will use every legal instrument at his disposal to uncover electoral irregularities that might have taken place in this election.
The leftist candidate said that from Wednesday on he will monitor and scrutinize the vote counting process. He said it was a “shame” that PRI politicians, the federal government, and the media’s distorted information “dominated” the election, and lashed out against the PRI with accusations of vote buying and exceeding campaign-spending limits.
Gee, just because the media distortion did — objectively — dominate the election and accusations of vote buying and exceeding campaign-spending limits are — objectively — true, no reason to get so touchy about it. It wasn’t Mexican voters who were being insulted, it was idiots who publish things like this.
BTW, PRI national chair, Pedro Joaquín Coldwell is not opposed to a full ballot by ballot recount.
It ain’t over yet
“The most trustworthy and controlled voting system in Latin America”
Cesár Gaveria, former Costa Rican President and head of the OAS election monitor
President Gaveria doesn’t speak well of Latin American elections… or maybe he does. He was only speaking of the voting process itself — with real-time checking of IFE cards, purple thumbs, security paper ballots, transparent ballot boxes, etc. … which is a model for the world, if extremely expensive: ($400 pesos per vote, although that includes public financing for political parties).
IFE surprised me and did the right thing, ordering the examination of ballots from about half of the 143,114 precincts nationwide. As of this evening, about half of that half of the precincts have been recalculated, but we won’t know the results for another day or two.
Whatever the results, they won’t end speculation about the election itself. There are still a number of those “other” issues — vote buying, , Nor, for that matter, will it end the uncertainty over the whole 1 July election. Gaveria was specifically NOT talking about vote buying schemes, blatant media manipulation, ballot stuffing, and the cavalier disregard for campaign finance laws, which were outside his brief as an international election observer. There are still several unresolved complaints not related to the vote count yet to be heard by the Elections Tribunal (sort of the appeals court for the Elections Commission) which could conceivably annul the results in some districts, requiring a do-over election in those districts.
A better role model
I’ve never understood why groups like “Anonymous”, especially here in Mexico, use those silly Guy Fawkes masks. OK, I get it that there was a commercical film that never had much circulation here, somehow becoming a cult favorite of the English-speaking anti-corporate types… that featured a guy wearing a mask of a guy named Guy who back in the early 1600s was trying to replace a Protestant monarchy with a Catholic one. Which doesn’t seem to have a lot of do with anything vaguely progressive, populist, or Mexican.
Now… with the need for a disguise to wear when fighting for transparency… maybe if we had a real anarchist hero…
… hmmmmm…somebody a little more attuned to the Mexican way of protest ……
(Liberated, for the good of the pueblo, from Wonkette)
mexfiles.net 