Narrow advantage for Morena in last poll before Mexico State vote

A new Economista/Mitofsky poll for the Mexico State gubernatorial race shows Morena candidate Delfina Gómez with a slim lead over the PRI-ista Alfredo Del Mazo.  The campaigns end this coming Wednesday, and the vote is on Sunday, June 4.

The poll was carried out from May 25-27, and gives Gómez a 3.5% lead over Del Mazo.  According to Mitofsky, Del Mazo peaked at the beginning of May and has been losing ground, with the Morena candidate being the main beneficiary.  The other two main candidates, Josefina Vázquez of the PAN and Juan Zepeda of the PRD have held steady The 1,000 person poll has a statistical margin of error of ±3.1%.

The poll probably does not reflect the May 26 announcement by the PT candidate Óscar González, who is polling at 2%, withdrawing and asking his supporters to back Gómez.

Other recent polls have shown Del Mazo with a lead, and most observers think the determining factor will be voter turnout, which has historically been 50% or less for gubernatorial elections in the state.

Award-winning crime journalist murdered

Javier Váldez became the sixth Mexican crime reporter to be murdered this year.  The founder of the weekly Ríodoce was shot dead around midday as he was driving in downtown Culiacán, Sinaloa.  Váldez’s body was left in the street, after his car was intercepted by a Toyota Corolla filled with gunmen, according to news reports.

In 2011, the Committee to Project Journalists awarded Váldez the International Press Freedom Award. He was also a regular columnist for other media, and well known to international reporters for aiding them in understanding the drug wars.   As Javier Lafuente of El Pais writes:

The blow to journalism–to Mexican society–is terrible, even more so in the face of the noisy, entrenched impunity and the silence of institutions.  There have been no arrests for the six journalists assassinated this year.  The reaction to the five deaths before Váldez has been to designate a prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression, a measure that seems derisory given the magnitude of the tragedy.

Earlier in May, the Committee to Project Journalists published a special report, No Excuse: Mexico must break cycle of impunity in journalists’ murders.

 

Jorge Castañeda abandons quest as independent candidate for President; endorses Senator Armando Ríos Piter

Jorge Castañeda, one of Mexico’s leading public policy intellectuals and Foreign Minister under Vicente Fox, wrote today that he was giving up his long-time quest to run as an independent candidate for President.  And he threw his support to independent Senator Armando Ríos Piter, who resigned from the PRD and declared his candidacy in February.

Comparing the political situation in Mexico to that of France, Castañeda wrote in his column that while the objective conditions in Mexico were even more favorable than in France for a fresh political voice to triumph, the electoral system made it very unlikely, especially with a multiplicity of potential independent candidates.  To have a chance of unseating the discredited partidocracy, voters would have to rally around a single independent candidate:

After more than a year of considerable effort, it is evident to me that … this unity candidate will not be me.  However, I believe there are others who can meet the requirements:  of freshness, a breadth of support, an ability to get people out.  One in particular:  El Jaguar, [Armando] Ríos Piter can count on my total support, in this fight that has barely begun.

Castañeda was personally the major force in making independent candidacies possible in Mexico.  In 2004, he started a political and legal challenge to the electoral laws that gave registered political parties exclusive right to name candidates for office.  His case went to the Mexican Supreme Court, where he lost.  He appealed to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where ultimately he was again turned down, in appeals that lasted into 2013. However, while the case was pending, Congress approved independent candidates in the 2007 electoral reform.  (And in 2015, the voters of Nuevo León elected Jaime Rodríguez, El Bronco, governor — the first independent to win a major political office.)

State of Mexico election still wide open

A new poll by El Universal gives PRI candidate Alfredo del Mazo a narrow lead over Morena candidate Delfina Gómez in the race of State of Mexico governor.  PAN candidate Josefina Vázquez has slipped to fourth place — after a poor debate performance on April 25 and a lackluster campaign — while Juan Zepeda of the PRD is now in third.  Most surprisingly, however, the share of voters who are undecided rose from 31% in April to 38% in May.  The election is on June 4, and the second and last candidate debate is tomorrow night.

Of the candidates, Zepeda has the highest favorability rating (+37%), while Del Mazo has the highest disapproval rating (-43%).

The survey also shows that while 46% approve the performance of current PRI Governor Eruviel Ávila (vs. 41% disapproval) , 7 in 10 would like to see a change in the party controlling the state.

 

Negotiating NAFTA

https://twitter.com/dbmwilson/status/857570377899397120

Morena and PRI candidates tied in Mexico State

On the eve of the first debate between the candidates, a new Reforma poll published today showed that Delfina Gómez (Morena) and Alfredo del Mazo (PRI) continue to be tied for the lead in the Mexico State gubernatorial election, with 28-29% of the vote each.  Josefina Vázquez (PAN) has slipped to 22%, while Juan Zepeda (PRD) has risen slightly to 14%.  (The published results are adjusted for the 29% who are undecided.)

Gómez also leads del Mazo in almost all other indicators (“more trustworthy”, “closer to the people”, etc.), except in the category experience, where del Mazo is ahead.  The Morena candidate has a much stronger favorability rating — 27% favorable vs 15% unfavorable.  Only 20% of those polled view del Mazo favorably, while 37% see him unfavorably.

All five regular party candidates for Governor will participate in tonight’s 90-minute televised debate. One of the two independents (Castell) may join, while the registration of the other (Pastor) was suspended after legal challenges.

 

 

 

Morena candidate caught on video receiving cash donation to give to AMLO

El Universal today published a short video of Eva Cadena, the Morena candidate for mayor of Las Choapas in Veracruz state, receiving Ps. 500,000 in cash from an unidentified person off camera with the instruction to give it to López Obrador.  Ms. Cadena accepts the cash and promises to deliver it.  The video was apparently made on April 6, and AMLO appeared with Cadena on April 8 to launch her campaign.

The person giving Cadena the cash says that she is being given the cash to pass on to AMLO because he “is very fond of you and has absolute trust in you.”  Cadena’s only request is to be given something in which to put the money.  (She is given a large manila envelope.)

This afternoon, Cadena resigned her candidacy for mayor of Las Choapas, a town of 83,000 people in the oil belt.  In a radio interview, she reportedly said, “I recognize the error I made in having this meeting. … I was set up, [and] I will put myself at the disposition of the party.  I made a mistake, and I take responsibility.”  In a statement, she also said that when she was told that cash campaign donations were not legal, she returned the money.

López Obrador reacted immediately with a YouTube video saying “the Mafia in power is full of fear of Morena; Salinas, Peña, Fox, Calderón and their flunkies are trying to destroy us politically in this dirty war,” but that, “we’ve always emerged unwounded from slanders.  Our shield is our honesty.”

The video does have the feel of a frame-up, but it unleashed a wave of denunciations from all the other parties directed at AMLO and Morena.

 

Ex-Pemex chief Lozoya received US$ 5 million bribe, per Odebrecht

Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya was directly implicated in the Odebrecht bribery scandal.  According to one of the unsealed plea bargain agreements being reviewed by Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), Lozoya was paid US$ 5.0 million in November 2014 “as a counterpart to undue benefits obtained by Odebrecht.”

In the STF document dated April 4, 2017, Hilberto Mascarenhas, the head of Odebrecht’s “Structured Operations” section, which handled all the bribe payments, said he was directed to make the payment to Lozoya, and that the bribe “was solicited” during a meeting held with Odebrecht’s Mexico head.

As reported by El Economista,

Lozoya denied having anything to do with the supposed bribes paid by Odebrecht.  It has not yet been clarified if it was Lozoya himself who solicited the bribe, or someone acting on his behalf, or whether the bribe was actually paid.

Lozoya, who led Pemex from the end of 2012 to February 2016, warned: ‘I reserve the right to take legal action against those who slander me without any legal basis.’

Pemex has not commented on the Lozoya allegations.

Odebrecht has confessed to paying Mexican officials a total of US$10.5 million between 2010 and 2014, a time frame spanning both the Calderón and Peña Nieto governments.  No other names of alleged bribe recipients have been disclosed.

Mexicans react with skepticism and irony to Duarte’s arrest

Public reaction to the arrest in Guatemala of Javier Duarte, the fugitive ex-Governor of Veracruz, has abounded in skepticism, with more than a million postings on each of Facebook and Twitter in Mexico.  He has become “the El Chapo of the PRI,” as columnist Carlos Marín noted.  One reporter twittered ironically about the self-congratulatory messages the PRI establishment sent out: “This is PRI-istas applauding PRI-istas for the arrest of a PRI-ista who diverted public moneys for PRI-ista election campaigns.”

Many have called the arrest a “negotiated surrender.”  They say that Duarte agreed to give himself up and stay silent about the many politicians complicit in his crimes, in return for a light sentence and protection from prosecution for his wife and other family members.  They cite the bizarre smile on Duarte’s face in the custody of the Guatemalan authorities and the fact that his wife, who was clearly involved in many of the transactions to divert public funds, was not arrested.  “This is nonsensical, to say the least,” comments Marín.  “The same people who were saying the government was protecting him a few days ago are now saying that the whole thing was a charade.”

One of these was Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was also roundly mocked for calling Duarte a “scapegoat,” implying of course that Duarte was innocent.

Capture of fugitive ex-governor rekindles debate on official corruption

The arrest in Italy of former Tamaulipas governor Tómas Yarrington (1999-2004), based on information provided by the U.S., and fresh revelations on how he avoided arrest since an arrest warrant was issued in 2012 have spurred new debate on official complacency (at best) in prosecuting senior PRI officials in Mexico.

Amazingly, it appears that while Yarrington was a fugitive, the state attorney general’s office in Tamaulipas under PRI governor Egidio Torre (2012-16) was paying eight bodyguards to protect him.  This came to light only after a PAN governor was elected and took office in October 2016.

Surreal. Kafkaesque. Incomprehensible.  The PRIista government commissioned and paid for his bodyguards, but didn’t know where to find the fugitive ex-governor?

questioned columnist Héctor de Mauleón.

It was only after these revelations that the current federal PGR issued a Ps. 15 million reward for Yarrington’s arrest, and he is believed to have fled the country.

Both the U.S. and Mexico are seeking to extradite Yarrington.  He is alleged to have worked with both the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, protecting state and municipal police and mayors who were in the pay of the cartels, and laundered millions in drug proceeds.  He was indicted in Mexico in 2012.

 

The Peña Nieto government has also drawn scorn from the press for trying to take credit for providing Italy with information that led to his arrest.  According to official Italian statements, it was U.S. Homeland Security and ICE that provided the intelligence that led to his capture.

It’s the corruption, stupid! In a country that is becoming more and more disappointed and skeptical, corruption has become one of the most painful and important political issues

writes Sergio Sarmiento today.

Sources:  El Universal, Breitbart Texas, Reforma, El Pais,