If PRI Regains Control: Withdraw Military, and Return to a Pact with the Devil?

Pena rises, as cartels push to influence elections, in an unprecedented immersion.  A PRI victory has implications reaching across the border in a complete game changer for immigration, trade and the drug war...  Latest poll relfects a surge for PAN party candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota, who is now within striking distance to the once seemingly unreachable Pena.  Paz, Chivis

“They made pacts with criminals, and now Peña Nieto, when the time comes, is going to say ‘I don’t know anything…” Silvano Aureoles

Peña Nieto

Sandro Mairata for Univision

The former Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate for governor of Michoacan, Silvano Aureoles, was pretty straightforward when speaking to Milenio newspaper about the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) political dealings.

In an interview published Wednesday, Aureoles stated: “We know how the networks at PRI work,” he said. “And we know the source of its former power: They made pacts with criminals, and now Peña Nieto, when the time comes, is going to say ‘I don’t know anything…’”

Enter Enrique Peña Nieto, the handsome 45-year old former governor of Mexico who, after Manlio Fabio Beltrones declined to seek the presidential nomination for the party, now has a clear path to run as the PRI candidate for the presidential elections. In a statement published in many newspapers on Tuesday, November 22, Beltrones – a senator who, by many accounts, is a savvy politician – said he stepped aside as a “contribution to the PRI victory in 2012” and “not as a sacrifice.”

After last week’s confirmation of Andrés López Obrador as PRD’s official presidential candidate, it’s only the National Action Party (PAN) that needs to select its candidate. The choice is between Sen. Santiago Creel, former Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero, and former Education Minister Josefina Vazquez Mota.

In any case, under Mexican electoral rules, candidacies won’t be official until March.

Peña Nieto, a widower who made headlines and magazine covers a year ago by marrying soap opera star Angélica Rivera, is the strongest candidate the PRI has had in years and provides hope to a party seeking to regain the power it held from 1929 to 2000.

Polls favor the Atlacomulco lawyer, and he’s been confident enough to speak about his own approach to the U.S. – Mexico relationship regarding immigration and the war on drugs.

“I think we need better regulation about the participation of the military,” Peña Nieto told Univision News in a recent interview, “and, gradually, I believe that the military forces need to go back to their quarters and … have civil institutions [fight] the crime organizations.”

Current president Felipe Calderón is a harsh critic of U.S. policies and is also reluctant to give meaningful interviews.

But drug cartels are casting their shadow over the elections. It was Milenio – via its TV network branch – that aired an audio recording of drug trafficker Horacio Morales Baca, aka “El Perro” (The Dog), intimidating people from two Michoacan towns. He threatened to kill them unless they voted for PRI candidate Julián Rodríguez Rosales for mayor of Tuzlanta.

Morales Baca is a member of the drug gang “La Familia” (The Family), a rival group of “Los Caballeros Templarios” (The Templar Knights), which is allegedly tied with some PRD candidates. Milenio reports that Silvano Aureoles, a PRD governor candidate, might have received $2 million from Los Caballeros Templarios, led by Servando Gómez Martínez.

After the tragic death of Interior Minister José Francisco Blake Mora in a November 11 helicopter crash, newly appointed Minister Alejandro Poire said: “From now until next year we have to do everything possible to guarantee a peaceful electoral process in which the expression of organized crime is eliminated.”

Many certainly hope so. In the meantime, now that it’s clear who the main contenders are, Mexicans would have to choose to whom they give a second chance: The narrow loser of the 2006 elections – when Calderón defeated López Obrador by 0.56 percent – or the former almighty political party that many attribute Mexico’s current accomplishments as a country to – as well as most of its problems.
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Reuters) - Josefina Vazquez Mota, the first female presidential candidate from any of Mexico's three main political parties, is steadily rising in popularity and catching up to frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto, a poll showed on Monday.

Vasquez Mota, from the ruling National Action Party (PAN), has 32 percent support ahead of the July 1 election, but is still trailing 16 points behind Pena Nieto from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI....

Read full article here

The Church comes under fire:

The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico has come under fire for issuing voting “guidelines.” The “pastoral guidelines” do not mention any particular party, but dictate that Catholics should not “choose as a political option those who support or promote false rights or liberties that attack the teachings contained in the Holy Scriptures, tradition and doctrine of the Church.” They should also “be alert to the commitments of the candidates and their parties to respect the foremost of all rights, which is the right to life, from the moment of conception.”

According to The Associated Press, the recommendations seem to be aimed especially at candidates from the PRD, which legalized both  gay marriage and abortion in Mexico City  The document seems carefully constructed to skirt the ban on all religious groups from engaging in electoral politics. The law prohibits the church from  supporting or opposing a candidate or party. ..(Mexico Institute)

Left, Right, or Center? or Red, blue or yellow?  Mexican political brand names explained. 

LA Times gives an excellent user friendly overview of the parties, link on here