Philip L. Russell : Mexican Elections Widen Political Chasm

Members of #yosoy132 protest alleged election fraud in Mexico. Image from Center for International Policy.
The Mexican elections:
Decision and division

The court decision once again showed how divided Mexico is and how inured to election violations its population is.

By Philip L. Russell / The Rag Blog / September 20, 2012

MEXICO CITY -- The 2012 Mexican presidential elections widened the political chasm between the political mainstream (aka. neoliberal) and the Mexican left. A poll taken after the July 1 presidential elections showed that 60% of Mexicans felt that the elections were clean, while 40% declared they were not clean.

Ricardo Monreal, the campaign coordinator for leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) summarized the position of the 40%: “Torrents of money, from unknown sources, which moved outside normal financial channels, formed the basis of the electoral fraud. We estimate the PRI candidate spent 4.6 billion pesos [$353 million] while the legal campaign limit is 336 million pesos.”

Rather than accepting what they considered to be election fraud, AMLO’s coalition of political parties, the Progressive Movement, filed a 624-page challenge to the election. While acknowledging that the apparent winner, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), received more votes than AMLO, the challengers declared that the elections should be annulled due to their having failed to meet the constitutional standard of fairness.

The principle challenge to fairness was spending in excess of the legal limit. The $353 million of estimated spending included the cost of an “imperial” fleet of private airplanes and helicopters, massive campaign publicity, and the distribution of millions of items including home appliances, T-shirts, farm animals, and prepaid gift cards.

The challengers also alleged that there was outright vote buying using cash, prepaid phone cards, and other items. Other charges leveled by the Progressive Movement included the use of pre-election polls, not to measure public opinion, but to create the image of an inevitable Peña Nieto victory.

Mexico’s special election court rendered an unappealable decision affirming Peña Nieto’s victory. It ruled that excessive spending had only been suggested but not proved -- proof which would not be available until final campaign accounting was due in January.

Similarly it rejected the many items, such as prepaid phone cards, used to show vote buying by declaring that the challengers only showed that the cards existed, not that they were used to buy votes. The other challenges were also dismissed. Flawed polling, the court ruled, was simply an exercise of free speech, not a cause for invalidating the election.

The court decision once again showed how divided Mexico is and how inured to election violations its population is. A poll after the ruling showed that 55% of Mexicans thought the election court made the correct decision, while 71% felt that vote buying had occurred.

The now officially victorious PRI candidate welcomed the decision and set about arranging the political transition. The PAN, the party of incumbent president Felipe Calderón, also accepted the decision but did suggest an obvious change to electoral procedure -- requiring parties to submit their records of campaign spending before the election court rules on the validity of an election.

Not surprisingly, the ruling dismayed the progressive intelligentsia. Criticism centered on the court’s failure to use its investigatory power to determine the quantity and origin of the massive campaign spending obvious to everyday Mexicans. This, critics allege, would have likely uncovered money coming from illegal sources (such as drug traffickers), money channeled through illegal channels (by law money must be channeled through political parties), and money being spent in excess of the 336-million-peso limit.

Critics noted requiring those challenging elections to document cash flow constitutes a virtual invitation to illegal spending. Political parties lack the power to subpoena bank records to document cash flow, while the court has full subpoena power. Similarly pundits noted the court set an almost impossibly high bar for proving vote buying since both material objects (as phone cards) and sworn testimony were deemed insufficient evidence to prove vote buying.

Response to the court ruling went beyond the written word. The day after the August 30 court ruling, #yosoy132, the student movement which sprang up to protest the “imposition” of Peña Nieto as president, staged a demonstration. Some 4,000 marched in a Mexico City “funeral procession” for democracy. A sign at the protest summed up the tenor of the march “Those on top say we should give up and accept Peña Nieto as president, those on the bottom say ‘surrender prohibited.’”

The following day another 2,500 turned out to protest as the new members of the Chamber of Deputies were sworn in. In other cities, such as Guadalajara, some 4,000 marched. A sign there read, “We block streets, we unblock minds.”

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, former presidential candidate of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), gives a thumbs up to his supporters at Mexico City's Zocalo Plaza, Sept. 9, 2012. Photo by Christian Palma / AP.
Although members of the PRD, the main party of the coalition nominating AMLO, did not welcome the court ruling, the party not only failed to endorse protest demonstrations, but declared it would work within the system. PRD president Jesús Zambrano stated that since it was their duty to serve their citizens, state governors belonging to the PRD would recognize Peña Nieto as president and work with him. Similarly Miguel Barbosa, the PRD Senate leader, declared that the PRD congressional delegation would engage in dialogue with Peña Nieto.

The PRD is pinning its hopes on creating a responsible image and thus building on the 15.9 million votes its candidate received in the 2012 presidential elections. This could position the party to challenge the PRI in the next presidential election in 2018. The best-known potential PRD candidate for 2018 is Marcelo Ebrard, current mayor of Mexico City. He is popular at the end of his six-year term and has already declared that when his term ends in December he will begin campaigning for the presidency.

Another potential PRD candidate for 2018, Miguel Mancera, elected on July 1 to succeed Ebrard. Mancera, who outpolled the PRI mayoral candidate by 44%, faces the immense challenge of enhancing his image while administering the huge city characterized by the late writer John Ross as El Monstruo. While Mancera has to struggle with administering the monster, Ebrard, who will have no official position after December, must keep himself in voters’ minds.

While the PRD vows to work within the system, its 2012 (and 2006) candidate Andres Manuel López Obrador took the opposite course. At a massive September 9 rally in Mexico City’s main plaza he declared, “I am not going to recognize Peña Nieto as president.” He also announced he was resigning from the PRD -- a party he had been a member of for 23 years and which he had served as president of.

In the future his political vehicle will be Morena (Movement for National Regeneration) -- the grassroots movement he built up to support his 2012 candidacy. He laid out plans to convert Morena into a recognized political party. Rather than retiring from politics, as he had previously announced he would do if he lost the election, he declared, “We will continue to struggle our whole lives until we reach our goal -- the transformation of Mexico.”

The rally very much personalized AMLO’s leadership. Speakers warming up the crowd referred to him simply as “the Leader” -- as if it were foreordained that he would lead Morena into the future. Similarly, during the rally the crowd repeatedly chanted, “Es un honor luchar con Obrador (It’s an honor to struggle with Obrador).”

The meaning of AMLO’s leaving the PRD is still unclear. It will blur the image of the left. The PRD will attempt to serve as a responsible legislative force worthy of the presidency, while AMLO and Morena have specifically rejected such a course, saying he and his followers would not be errand boys for the Peña Nieto administration.

Looking ahead to 2018, it is hard to see AMLO declining Morena’s presidential nomination. (It should be noted that George Grayson’s biography of AMLO is entitled The Mexican Messiah.) Similarly it seems unlikely that Ebrard would step aside in 2018 for AMLO (as he did in 2012). As columnist Sergio Sarmiento observed, as a result of AMLO’s leaving the PRD, “The left’s possibility of winning the presidency in 2018 was significantly reduced.”

[Austin-based writer Philip L. Russell has written six books on Latin America. His latest is The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present (Routledge). Read more articles by Philip L. Russell on The Rag Blog.]

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Philip L. Russell : Who Won the Mexican Election?

Protesters from Yosoy132 hold a mock funeral for "domocracia" during march in Mexico City, Saturday, July 14. Photo by Bernardo Montoya / Reuters.
An observers' manual:
Who won the Mexican election?

Charges of vote-buying and exceeding campaign spending limits notwithstanding, there are positive signs for Mexico’s nascent democracy.

By Philip L. Russell / The Rag Blog / July 19, 2012

Anyone who hasn’t been deliberately ignoring the news knows by now that PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto “won” the July 1 Mexican presidential election with 19.2 million votes compared to 15.8 million for the runner-up.

That however isn’t the case, since legally speaking there is a victor in Mexican elections only when a special electoral court issues an unappealable ruling that a candidate a) received more votes than any other and b) the complaints filed against the apparent winner are without merit. The court is legally required to issue its ruling by September 6.

Just as occurred in the 2006 presidential election, the candidate who was declared to have received the second highest number of votes has challenged the victory of the candidate with the most votes. In both 2006 and 2012, the candidate with the second highest vote total was Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

On July 12 AMLO challenged Peña Nieto’s electoral victory, filing a 638-page document alleging that the election failed to meet the standards set by the Mexican constitution. Article 41 stipulates that elections be “free and fair (libres y auténticas).” López Obrador based his challenge on the following:

Charge #1: The Peña Nieto campaign spent far in excess of the established legal limit. Financial accounting for the sprawling, decentralized PRI campaign isn’t even due until after the electoral court issues its final unappealable ruling. The charge is very likely true, given the massive spending which was evident during the campaign.

The only PRI campaign for which accurate spending figures are available is the 1994 gubernatorial campaign in Tabasco. In that case, the PRI spent $72 million to get its candidate elected, more than 60 times the legal limit. The exact spending total is known, not due to close auditing, but because someone leaked detailed accounts of PRI expenses. Photos of the 1,600 buses parked at a soccer stadium for Peña Nieto’s closing rally have become a symbol of the PRI’s extralegal extravagance.

Charge #2: The PRI won by buying votes. This is clearly illegal and if shown to have swung the election, would be grounds for annullment. At a press conference, AMLO exhibited 3,500 pre-paid gift cards redeemable at a big box retail store in a slum on the east edge of Mexico City. He charged the cards had been supplied by PRI operatives in exchange for PRI votes.

In other areas AMLO charged that the PRI bought votes by passing out debit cards, food baskets, construction materials, and fertilizer. Vote buying is a firmly entrenched practice in Mexico. However, providing legal proof that sufficient votes were bought to swing the election is a daunting challenge.

Charge #3: Peña Nieto’s campaign received money through illegal channels. By law, all campaign spending must be channeled through recognized political parties. AMLO charged the Peña Nieto campaign used funds outside the party structure to make massive buys of pre-paid gift cards and debit cards which were distributed to sway votes. Other funds illegally used by the campaign came from PRI-controlled state governments and from abroad.

Charge #4: Polls indicating that Peña Nieto had an overwhelming lead over AMLO served to create the impression that a Peña Nieto victory was inevitable. While the polls were portrayed as impartial, they were paid for by the PRI to bolster Peña Nieto's candidacy.

Charge #5: The broadcast media -- radio and television -- illegally provided de facto support for Peña Nieto by casting as news stories programming produced to further the Peña Nieto campaign.

Charge #6: During the course of the campaign the PRD pointed out the violations of election law noted above. Both the government agency charged with organizing the election and the agency charged with prosecuting electoral crime ignored PRD complaints during the election when action could have been taken to ensure electoral fairness.

The Mexican electoral court has two possible courses of action. After examining complaints it can rule that regardless of what irregularities were proven, the election still met the “free and fair” standard. It can also rule, based on Article 41, that the election should be nullified.

The court is not legally empowered to disqualify an individual candidate, as Tour de France officials can when an individual rider is found to have used illegal drugs.

Peña Nieto will almost certainly be declared the winner. If the election were overturned it would be a much greater decision than Bush v. Gore. In the U.S. case, there were two candidates, each ready and willing to move into the White House. In the Mexican case, overturning the election would mean starting the whole complex election process over again.

Since this process cannot be completed before the end of incumbent President Calderón’s term on November 30, the incoming congress would have to select an interim president until the new election selected someone to serve as president until 2018.

Even though it appears AMLO won’t gain the presidency, he did surprisingly well. He shook off the negative image created by his massive 2006 post-electoral protests and received more votes in 2012 than he did in 2006. Also, he was the only major candidate who gained ground during the course of the campaign, at the expense of both Peña Nieto and Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the incumbent PAN.

The left in general also made important gains. The PRD candidate for Mexico City mayor, a position generally regarded as the second most important in the country, received a whopping 44% more votes than the PRI candidate. The left also emerged as the second largest force in the Chamber of Deputies.

Charges of vote-buying and exceeding campaign spending limits notwithstanding, there are positive signs for Mexico’s nascent democracy. For the third presidential election in a row, citizen-volunteers manned polling places and counted votes with minimal controversy. Voters frequently voted for one presidential candidate and for a congressional candidate from a different party. Finally the election gave birth to the #yosoy132 student movement.

Just as the Occupy Movement in the U.S. highlighted wealth inequality and the recent Chilean student movement highlighted the inequality in educational opportunity, Mexican students focused unprecedented public scrutiny on the de facto political power of Mexico’s television duopoly.

[Austin-based writer Philip L. Russell has written six books on Latin America. His latest is The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present (Routledge). ]

Also read Philip Russell's earlier Rag Blog reports on the Mexican elections.

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John Ross : Lopez Obrador's Mexico City Love Fest

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador:
Massive love fest kicks of presidential run

By John Ross / The Rag Blog / July 29, 2010

MEXICO CITY -- On a damp Sunday morning four years from the month in which the presidency of Mexico was stolen from him in the fraud-marred elections of 2006 and two years before the next presidential race kicks in, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) convoked tens of thousands of supporters to the great Zocalo plaza in the heart of the city of which he was once a wildly popular mayor, to make it abundantly clear that he will again be the candidate of the Left on the 2012 ballot.

The humongous July 25th rally during which AMLO presented what he labeled "an alternative project for the nation" unfolded right under the City Hall windows of Lopez Obrador's successor as mayor of this monster megalopolis, Marcelo Ebrard, his chief rival to head a coalition of left parties in the 2012 "presidenciales."

Under the astute guidance of his political Padrino, Manuel Camacho Solis, himself a former mayor of Mexico City, Ebrard has been assiduously positioning himself to lead the left ticket with the connivance of Lopez Obrador's archrivals, bonded together under the collective logo of "Los Chuchus" (slang for both the Christian savior and mongrel dogs) and headed by the Big Chuchu himself, Jesus Ortega, a PRD senator prone to cutting deals with right-wing President Felipe Calderon's PAN.

AMLO amassed 17 million votes in the 2006 balloting as the presidential candidate of the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and two smaller left parties but despite widespread allegations of fraud committed by the ruling PAN party, Calderon was awarded the election by .057% of the total vote when the nation's Supreme Electoral Tribunal denied a re-count.

A year after Andres Manuel garnered more votes than any other left candidate in Mexican political history, Ortega and his Chuchus took over the structure of the PRD in internal party elections that proved as bogus as the presidential vote-taking. Ballot boxes were swiped and others never counted. Precincts in which no one voted ran up massive tallies for New Left, the Chuchu faction. After several years of internal strife that left the left party badly bruised, Ortega's group finally consolidated control of the PRD structure if not the base, which still tilts towards AMLO.

Lopez Obrador, who continues to have one leg inside the party of which he was once president, is sharply critical of Ortega's prolonged game of footsy with Calderon's PAN. This past July 4th, the Chuchus linked arms with the right-wingers to assemble a coalition that won the governorships of Sinaloa, Puebla, and Oaxaca. The alliance was brokered by Manuel Camacho Solis, Marcelo Ebrard's guru.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador AKA "El Peje" (a gar-like fish from his native Tabasco) has been running for high office ever since he declared himself "the legitimate President of Mexico" in the aftermath of tumultuous protests that followed the 2006 flimflam. He reaffirmed his intentions on July 7th in an exclusive interview with the left daily La Jornada, a longtime champion of his cause and the July 25th convocation in the Zocalo signified the unofficial inauguration of his presidential campaign -- according to Mexican electoral law, pre-candidates for party nominations cannot legally launch their campaigns until six months before the actual election.

In presenting his "New Alternative Project for the Nation" to a delirious throng that never ceased to chant "AMLO Presidente!" Lopez Obrador called upon the people to rescue the state from a "mafia" of oligarchs and place it at the service of the majority of Mexicans: "Only the people can save the people."

El Peje also advocated for the democratization of the nation's mass media. The corporate press has attacked AMLO with hateful vitriol since he was elected Mexico City mayor in 2000. One recent example: when one of his sons was spotted sporting $80 USD sneakers, Televisa and TV Azteca, the two-headed television monopoly, ran this earth-shaking item at the top of the news during a week when drug war massacres and killer floods were devastating the north of the nation. "If in 2006, they lied that my campaign was funded by Hugo Chavez, a man I've never met, then in 2012 they will say that I am Bin Laden's brother," Lopez Obrador joked to La Jornada.

Also included in the leftist's alternative project for the nation that is guaranteed to be dissed by the oligarchs: the abolishment of fiscal privilege -- El Peje promises to tax profits on the Mexican stock market and to force national and transnational mega-corporations that now pay minimal taxes, to cough up their fair share. Lopez Obrador, who, in 2008 built a popular movement that slammed shut the door on a Calderon-inspired privatization of the state-run petroleum monopoly PEMEX, demands a strengthening of the energy sector with sharp diminishment of U.S.-bound exports so that Mexico can use its own oil to fuel national development.

Marcelo Ebrard.
AMLO also pledges to strive for nutritional sovereignty to prevent the nation's increasing dependency on food imports, i.e. eight to 10 million tons of cheap U.S. and Canadian corn that have wrecked Mexican agriculture and driven millions of farmers to seek survival in El Norte. As in 2006, Lopez Obrador seeks the renegotiation of NAFTA.

But what surprised many in AMLO's flock in the Zocalo was his insistence on incorporating in his presidential platform an emphatic defense of the moral and cultural values of Mexico, urging his followers not to be trapped by materialism and consumerism but rather to cultivate solidarity and nourish family and social relations.

"Kisses harvest kisses," he preached, encouraging the crowd to hug those around them as at the end of Catholic Mass. This mellowing of the once-crusty Peje may flow from his recent marriage and the birth of a new son who made his debut at the July 25th AMLOVE fest, as some leftish wags have dubbed it.

Aside from this surprising twist, Lopez Obrador emphasized many of the same points in his new project for the nation that he did in 2006. AMLO's crusades always accompany the underclass -- "the poor first" was his 2006 battle cry and race and class distinctions -- brown vs. white, poor vs. rich -- will again be the subtext of his 2012 campaign.

The upcoming presidential race may not be as lovey-dovey as Lopez Obrador would like. Although AMLO has built a broad-based social movement from the bottom, he tends to put all his eggs in the electoral basket rejecting more militant forms of struggle. Commited to Gandhianesque non-violent civil resistance, AMLO is critical of armed guerrilla movements and his 2006 presidential campaign was seriously bad-mouthed by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's Subcomandante Marcos, who has since dropped out of sight. Nonetheless, armed rebellion is always on the agenda here, particularly in 2010, the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution.

With the economy in chaos, unemployment at record levels, and out-of-control drug war raging throughout the north of the republic (25,000 dead since Calderon took office), the 2012 presidenciales are expected to be the most violent in the nation's history. This July's gubernatorial elections, the last major round of balloting before 2012, were jarred by the open intervention of the drug cartels which in some states used violence to vet candidates, most prominently the assassination of the PRI party front-runner for governor of Tamaulipas.

Crowd estimates for AMLO's July 25th campaign opener varied wildly from 30,000 to a quarter of a million -- the crowd filled the Zocalo floor and spilled out into surrounding streets which suggests the higher numbers. But whatever the real totals are. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador remains the only politico in the land who can drum out the masses -- four years ago on July 30th, at the zenith of post-electoral protest, AMLO drew 2,000,000 citizens to a rally, the largest political demonstration in Mexican history.

This July 25th, tens of thousands of throats never tired of taunting Felipe Calderon's own feeble powers of convocation: "These are the people of Lopez Obrador/ Where are yours, fucking Calderon?"

Attendance at the huge rally was not confined to Mexico City where Andres Manuel continues to have a deep base. Many thousands of supporters traveled the length and breadth of the country to be on hand for the campaign opener. Since early 2007, Lopez Obrador has visited all 2,400 municipalities or county seats throughout Mexico, relentlessly working his way from border to border and sea to sea "to keep the flame of hope alive" (AMLO) and learn what the "pueblo" is thinking.

Traveling through heartland and outback from Thursdays to Sundays of each week, he held three to five meetings daily, drawing dozens or thousands depending on the size of the venue, signing up 2.2 million citizens as representatives of his legitimate government, and building a network that now includes 9,000 territorial committees stretching from Chihuahua to Chiapas.

At the July 25th rally in the Zocalo, delegates from all 31 states, half of them women, presented an accounting of their achievements, among them the distribution of 35 million copies of the movement's monthly newspaper, Regeneration, named for a broadsheet edited by Ricardo Flores Magon that sparked the Mexican Revolution, the centennial of which is being celebrated this year.

Lopez Obrador's protracted journey through Mexico clocked 150,000 kilometers on paved highways and another 25,000 on dirt roads, mostly during 2009 when he visited 570 municipalities in the state of Oaxaca, 418 of them autonomous indigenous counties that have rarely if ever hosted a presidential candidate.

No Mexican politician has embarked upon such an odyssey since Lazaro Cardenas in 1933 before assuming the presidency of the country. Cardenas's extended travels sensitized him to the devastation of the underclass and infused his administration with a dedication to social justice.

Like Cardenas, Lopez Obrador took copious notes while on the road that have become the core of his ninth book, The Mafia That Has Taken Over Mexic0. Since his presentation of the new book that had thousands hanging from the rafters at the Metropolitan Theater in downtown Mexico City -- the literary event of the year -- Lopez Obrador has taken the book tour on the road in the provinces to spread the word.

The Mafia That Has Taken Over Mexico is a who's who of who holds power, listing 30 "potentates" as AMLO labels them as if Mexicans were living in Ali Baba land -- 16 oligarchs, including Carlos Slim, the world's richest tycoon, and "El Chapo" Guzman, reportedly Calderon's preferred narco-lord; a dozen politicos, leaders of the PAN and the once-ruling PRI (but no Chuchus); and a pair of bankers. At the top of the Mafia pyramid is the Capo de Tutti Capos ex-president Carlos Salinas who El Peje is convinced is responsible for the neo-liberal mutilation of Mexico.

Felipe Calderon.
AMLO's journey through what sociologist Guillermo Bonfils once termed "Mexico Profundo" shocked him. The ecological destruction of the country weighed heavily on Lopez Obrador as he traveled through this mosaic of poverty:

In Chihuahua, we traveled for five hours through the mountains on terrible dirt roads to reach the gold mine at Tayotita -- the Canadian transnational that now runs the mine takes the gold out by air. All over Mexico, these foreign corporations are ripping up the land and stealing the wealth of our country...

How Calderon's futile drug war has impacted Mexico also stunned AMLO:

...so many have died and yet the worst is the corruption of Mexican values. Materialism is degrading the nation. In Sinaloa, the cradle of narco culture, consumerism contaminates daily life: big trucks ("La Troca") Hummers, gold jewelry, designer clothes, expensive homes, cheap luxuries and runaway individualism while others live in shacks made of cardboard...

In Cochoapa in the Montana de Guerrero, the most impoverished region in Mexico,

I was startled by the silence of the Indians. They received me with a traditional band but the music was so sad that I couldn't stop crying...

I still have inscribed on my memory the image of an old woman in San Miguel Huautla in the Mixteca of Oaxaca. She showed me her painfully arthritic hands and with the scrupulous serenity of those who live in profound poverty told me they were dead because she had spent her whole life weaving sombreros for five pesos a day.

AMLO's travels give him an advantage in building a national movement from the grassroots that his rival for the left nomination for president Marcelo Ebrard, cooped up as he is in Mexico City City Hall juggling the megalopolis's multiple problems, does not enjoy. Although, like Lopez Obrador, Marcelo has initiated Pharonic public infrastructure projects that put people to work (jobs are votes), he is not universally worshipped by his constituents, as Andres Manuel was when he was mayor.

The "Supervia," a luxury toll road running from upscale Santa Fe in the west of the city angers an underclass whose homes and colonies have been expropriated and bulldozed for the project as does Metro subway construction in Tlahuac, one of the few rural delegations (boroughs) left in the city.

Yet despite his gaffes, Ebrard should split the capital vote with Lopez Obrador if there is a run-off between the two for the left nomination -- Mexico City accounts for a fifth of the nation's voters. But judging by AMLO's growing support outside of the city, Camacho Solis and the Chuchus will once again have to resort to fraud to wrest the countryside from El Peje.

Ebrard and Lopez Obrador profess to be friends and claim they have reached a gentleman's agreement that whoever is "better positioned" to run for the presidency at the end of 2011 will get the nod. How this will be determined verges on vagueness. A party primary run by the Chuchus will not be acceptable to Lopez Obrador. "Will they have a wrestling match in the Zocalo?" jabs Carlos Diaz, proprietor of the La Blanca Café in the city's old quarter, "and if so, who will get to wear the mask?"

AMLO's ties to the PRD are shaky at best. He broadcasts weekly on television utilizing time allocated to the Party of Labor or PT, a party instigated by Lopez Obrador's personal Moriarity, Carlos Salinas, to siphon votes from the PRD in the 1994 presidential elections, and if Marcelo is successful in stealing the PRD nomination, AMLO is liable to channel his campaign through the PT, a strategy that will surely bury the electoral Left in 2012. Some supporters suggest that El Peje should abandon the party system altogether and fight for a constitutional reform that will allow him to run as a candidate of a social movement.

Should the prognosis for his candidacy look bright at the end of next year, Ebrard will no doubt take a leave of absence as mayor of the capitol to campaign nationally. His likely replacement will be Dr. Juan Ramon de la Fuente, a former health secretary under Ernesto Zedillo but not a member of the PRI. De la Fuente, who has a strong base at the National Autonomous University (UNAM), is also mentioned as a compromise left candidate if Lopez Obrador and Marcelo Ebrard cannot sort out their differences.

Meanwhile, Mayor Marcelo uses City Hall as a bully pulpit to enhance his political fortunes. The Mayor, who has excellent posture but little charisma, has taken to promulgating emergency proclamations of late. With a mammoth rainstorm brewing over the city on the weekend of AMLO's July 25th love-in, the Mayor admonished his constituents not to make unnecessary trips -- at least not to the Zocalo for El Peje's campaign opener.

[John Ross is at home in the old quarter of Make Sicko City. His latest opus El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City is available at your neighborhood independent bookstore. You can direct all queries, kvetches, and faint praise to johnross@igc.org.]

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