AMLO Update: Tactical shift emerges from PRD camp

Mexico News ( The Herald Mexico ) ^ | Auugust 17, 2006 | Kelly Arthur Garrett

[StJacques]

Andrés Manuel López Obrador´s call for an ongoing "convention" of supporters to act as an extra-governmental political force underscores a tactical shift that has already changed the tone of the post-electoral dispute and also could define how Mexico is governed over the next six years.

The proposed National Democratic Convention (CND), set to meet for the first time in Mexico City´s Zócalo on Sept. 16, seems designed to convert the current López Obrador-led civil resistance movement into a permanent political movement functioning outside the confines of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD). It also promises to be a permanent thorn in Felipe Calderón´s side should the Electoral Tribunal name the National Action Party (PAN) candidate as the president-elect sometime before Sept. 6.

"This is an initiative to organize the peaceful civil resistance and demand respect for the popular will," López Obrador said Wednesday night, reading from a document drafted to convene the convention. "The fundamental proposal of the National Democratic Convention is for representatives from every pueblo in the country to decide the role we will assume in Mexico´s public life under present conditions."

Though a membership of thousands is planned, the CND will start with an organizing committee made up of a handful of prominent López Obrador supporters, including actress Jesusa Rodríguez, writer Elena Poniatowska, and political figures such as José Agustín Ortiz Pinchetti and Dante Delgado.

The new move comes at a time of intensifying rhetoric and actions from both sides of the post-electoral struggle in which López Obrador has challenged the uncertified vote count that puts Calderón ahead in the July 2 presidential voting by 0.58 percent. Alleging fraudulent counting and ballot manipulation, López Obrador has demanded a full recount, which Calderón has refused to endorse and the Electoral Tribunal has yet to order, with time running out.

PRD national spokesperson Gerardo Fernández Noroña said Wednesday the protest organizers were considering taking their actions up a notch from civil resistance to "civil disobedience." Unlike civil resistance actions, such as the current encampments along Paseo de la Reforma and two other Mexico City streets, civil disobedience could include illegal acts, such as not paying taxes. In any case, Fernández emphasized, the protests will remain peaceful.

The PAN federal government, meanwhile, has flexed its muscles recently, on Monday dispersing less than 100 protesters outside the Legislative Palace with hundreds of federal police agents. PRD lawmakers were beaten and injured in the action.

On Wednesday, the federal presence was still heavy around the building, with federal police officers, metal barricades, and Army personnel with armored vehicles capable of launching tear gas and high-pressure water streams.

Mexico City police chief Joel Ortega, who on Tuesday criticized the federal crackdown on the PRD protesters, said Wednesday that the ongoing Army presence was out of proportion to the situation. "They need to be careful that this doesn´t generate a spiral of violence that later can´t be controlled," Ortega said, referring to the use of the armored vehicles.

The Calderón camp reiterated its support for the crackdown on Wednesday. César Nava, a PAN assistant secretary general who has served as the party´s chief spokesperson since the July 2 election, called the PRD protest at the Congress building "an attempted assault" and the federal crackdown "fully justified."

López Obrador´s increasing emphasis on civil resistance, along with the convening of a permanent convention, has been widely interpreted as a strategy shift away from pressuring the tribunal to reverse election results to re-organizing his movement to weaken a future Calderón government.

"He practically takes for granted that Felipe Calderón will be confirmed as president," wrote political analyst Alberto Aziz Nassif in EL UNIVERSAL on Tuesday. "That´s why he´s established this bridge to the next phase."

As he announced the formation of the CND, López Obrador said almost as much. "Consummating this electoral fraud by imposing the candidate of the right as president would trample the will of the people as it was expressed at the polls on July 2, and violate the Constitution right in front of everybody´s eyes," he said.

[Cold Heat]

This may be posturing, to get some concessions and appointments from the new government. They need to nip this in the bud by forming a committee to deal with this preemptively.

At least I hope so.

If not, this could be a real problem for the new government and pain for us as well.

[StJacques]

"If not, this could be a real problem for the new government and pain for us as well."

If support for AMLO's challenge to the elections were to grow, it would be a very big problem. But apparently, the air is running out of AMLO's balloon and the damage the PRD has done to itself in the Federal District (Mexico City) by their shutdown of the central business district, which has both hurt and angered a significant number of their own supporters, could bode ill for the PRD over the long run. They were hoping to move the center of their power progressively northward and right now, given what we're seeing as the additional evidence of the Chiapas elections (see previous posts), it's receding in the opposite direction. I think Fox and the PAN have taken the right tack to simply let the PRD do itself in and it's paying dividends right now.

There are three big events coming over the next month: the decision of the Electoral Tribunal on the recounts, which we could see in a couple of days; Vicente Fox's Address to the National Congress on September 1, it's the Mexican equivalent of the State of the Union and which the PRD has promised to disrupt; and the Independence Day celebration of September 16, when AMLO is scheduling his "Democratic National Convention." We'll know a lot more when we see what happens with these three events.

And if the Chiapas election is annulled due to PRD fraud it will only add to the anti-AMLO turn events have taken recently.

[Shuttle Shucker]

>>>I think Fox and the PAN have taken the right tack to simply let the PRD do itself in<<<

As the PRI did in opposing Fox's potential reforms these past several years.

[Cold Heat]

Interesting....Thanks for the info...

[StJacques]

"As the PRI did in opposing Fox's potential reforms these past several years"

An interesting observation that raises a followup.

The PAN is coming into a pre-eminent position of power because the PRI and the PRD are both self-destructing, not because they have successfully delivered on their program.

[Shuttle Shucker]

The PAN has done ok in delivering on their program where Congress has allowed, I guess. I just read that foreign direct investment in Mexico is nearly 70% greater than it was during the same amount of time (5 years) under former president Ernesto Zedillo (when Zedillo admittedly had to confront the psychological consequences of the "tequila effect"). Meanwhile mortgage rates are lower than they've been in several decades, too, although one could argue that's a result of bank openings made possible by the Zedillo Administration to avert a total banking sector meltdown. Nevertheless, thanks in part to the high cost of petroleum (and stern austerity by Fox in some ways I guess) national debt's just 24% of total GDP, in contrast with over 70% (and rapidly growing) here in the USA. Debt's getting repaid early, in fact. Can you imagine having a president with the backbone and aversion to doling contracts out to allies who could accomplish such tasks up here?

[Shuttle Shucker]

It's neat how the conservative PAN is now using Mexico's campaign finance reform laws to poke at the Leftist PRD's blocking major roadways with its tents and other obstructions:

http://www.el-universal.com.mx/nacion/141981.html

The PAN has insightfully cited to the costs of port-a-potties, large drinking water containers and the daily renting of structures ("gruas") that make such nuisances possible. They rather credibly estimate that many millions of dollars are likely involved, too. Such expenditures are from a PRD that has whined about noncompliance with electoral laws. There may be something to this...

[StJacques]

I'd love to get an Austrian Economist (not an economist from Austria, "Austrian Economics" is a school of economic thought) to respond to your post #46 on the economic turnaround in Mexico under the Fox presidency, the phenomenological evidence for which you have expressed quite succinctly.

Austrian Economics focuses a lot of attention on the productivity of capital and a major point of emphasis which Austrian economists make is that inflationary monetary policies driven by the need to finance governmental debt strip capital of its full potential productivity because the purchasing power of currency is diminished. Over the last six years the Fox administration, which has been "frozen in place" so far as its legislative agenda is concerned, has been forced to turn its attention to spending Mexico's national capital reserves on reducing its debt. That debt was 50 Billion dollars when Fox took office and it has since been reduced to 40 Billion, a reduction of 20%. The ensuing effect is that capital resources which were previously used to finance a significant portion of Mexico's national debt have been freed up for use by Mexico's private sector and the impact is recognizable. The pent-up demand for investment capital was reduced, which brought interest rates down and increased the purchasing power of the peso, and the Mexican economy began to show real results as it began to stand on its own two feet. That phenomenon made Mexico a more attractive market for international capital investment, which has been flowing into the country over the past three years or so, since the turnaround became evident. The only problem Mexico really faces in terms of the financing of its domestic economy is the "top heaviness" (my term) that remains in place from its past, because its banking and financial system is still not one that diffuses capital efficiently throughout the country, something I have been pointing to over the past few weeks.

So even though it cannot be said that the PAN party implemented a legislative agenda which turned Mexico around, they can hold themselves up as "honest stewards" of the national economy since the positive effects of their management of Mexico's finances are plainly evident. They are just a few steps away from a brilliantly-executed turnaround from the disastrous economic consequences of the PRI which in the 1980's and 1990's nearly ruined the country completely.

[Shuttle Shucker]

I think it will be great if banks like BofA can operate independently and fully in Mexico. Anyhow, as for:

>>>The ensuing effect is that capital resources which were previously used to finance a significant portion of Mexico's national debt have been freed up for use by Mexico's private sector and the impact is recognizable.<<<

Have taxes declined? I guess what you mean is that interest rates have declined, enabling borrowers to get capital and fuel economic growth? I haven't read Ludwig Von Mises' stuff in a while but I doubt he'd agree that bureaucrats have been eliminating their own jobs even when the country's well-being requires it. Not in Mexico City and certainly not in Washington D.C. (where civil service protections are still ridiculously padded but that is scheduled to change in 2009 unless the new president reverses Bush's reforms).

[StJacques]

I do not know about taxes, but interest rates and inflation have both declined in Mexico.

And Mexico's lack of bureaucratic reform is still a drag on its development. But as you pointed out, we're guilty of that offense ourselves.