We have several background pieces that help give the "Big Picture" to
folks not living in the SW.
So clear your inbox, throw another log in the fireplace, and pour a
drink.
Reading materials for between football games
Should start showing up Sat.
thx
AZMEX POLICY 22 DEC 2011
Note: we can take this one to the bank, and if he follows PRI
tradition, he will too.
Peña Nieto says he will not accept support from narcos
Patricia Davila
December 21, 2011 · 35 Comments
http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=292293
MEXICO D.F. (Approved) .- The PRI candidate for the Presidency of the
Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto, demanded that the Federal Electoral
Institute (IFE) to review the compliance of primaries, with
candidates of different political parties.
"This is to check that all candidates and candidates, we comply with
what makes the law," he said, adding that as anticipated the PRI's
national leader, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, seek an agreement of
civility with all political forces with respect to the electorate,
and that the election is given in terms of proposals and ideas, not a
campaign of mud.
On the need to shield the election campaigns of the presence or
influence of organized crime, the former governor of Mexico state
said is to be avoided at all costs this infiltration, and said that
he and all his party candidates will not accept any support in this
regard .
Given the peasant sector of the PRI, the National Peasant
Confederation (CNC), Peña Nieto urged the government of Felipe
Calderon to intervene with additional funds to those approved by the
House of Representatives to address the effects of the worst drought
in Mexico has suffered in the last 70 years.
The PRI said is committed to the field, adding that it is time to
demand the urgent attention of the federal government, regardless of
the situation being experienced by this sector of production.
"It's a national disgrace that the Mexican countryside living, and if
not addressed, famine and food crisis will be exacerbated with
unfortunate consequences for our national sovereignty. These insults
us and we are consuming anxiety about the future, "said Gerardo
Sanchez meanwhile Garcia, president of the National Executive
Committee of the CNC.
After that, said the NCC is of "congratulations" because it has
special guest Enrique Peña Nieto.
"I have to tell you, my dear friend, who always saw the CNC in you
the man, the politician, the statesman by which we play it, where we
hope to rebuild the country.
"The CNC is always with you, because we know that the challenges
facing Mexico are egregious and just a politician like you, with your
temper, you can confront them forcefully. We need leaders, true
leaders to restore credibility and confidence of our people, our
people, "he said Sánchez García.
Just yesterday, Coldwell said of Peña Nieto: "We have the strongest
candidate in years, the best positioned in the polls ... is fully
capable of governing the country and has the skills that should be a
politician."
After mentioning that public institutions that support the field are
dismantled and detail the problems that is facing this sector, García
Sánchez Peña Nieto said:
"You have a huge challenge: to reclaim our nation. Nothing can stop
or distract from the important. In the CNC have a large army to
support you. "
He warned: "The opponents will not stop, and we less. We are
encouraged by the spirit of the Revolution and that motivates us
Adelitas the heart of Mexico. "
Mexico looks to U.S. for voters
Expatriates can cast ballot for president
by Daniel González - Dec. 18, 2011 10:32 PM
The Arizona Republic
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/12/02/20111202mexico-
united-states-voters.html
A young, handsome, media-savvy candidate is leading the polls.
The country's once-dominant political party is poised to make a
comeback.
The candidate who lost an earlier bid has returned for another shot.
And a woman is vying to become president of a country known for
machismo.
The script sounds similar to what is playing out in the United
States, where Republican candidates are battling for the opportunity
to run against President Barack Obama next fall.
But this battle isn't in the United States. This race is playing out
in Mexico, where voters will head to the polls in July to elect a new
president.
The next president of Mexico will tackle major issues, including a
bloody war with drug cartels and chronic problems with poverty and
joblessness.
The issues are critical, so the country's independent election office
is trying to boost voter turnout, particularly among Mexicans living
in the U.S. who still have close ties to their homeland.
Next year's election will mark only the second time that Mexicans
living abroad will be able to vote in a presidential election.
Turnout in 2006 among foreign nationals was abysmal -- not even
33,000 ballots from around the world were returned -- so officials
have streamlined the process and are ramping up their campaign to
increase turnout, particularly in the U.S.
The new president will be forced to grapple with chronic problems of
inequality, poverty and unemployment -- issues that will resonate
with Mexicans living in the U.S., said Miguel Tinker Salas, a
historian at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.
"This is a community that has one foot in both countries," he said.
"This is a community that is transnational, that can actually have
daily contact with their relatives so they are fully exposed to what
is happening in Mexico. In addition, they have access to Mexican
media through multiple sources."
A 'movie star' candidate
The Mexican presidential election already has generated intrigue
because of the candidates who have emerged and the issues the country
faces, analysts say.
The front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto, has been leading in the polls
by double digits, said George Grayson, a political-science professor
and expert on Mexican politics at the College of William and Mary in
Williamsburg, Va.
The former governor of Mexico, the country's most populous state,
"looks like a movie star" and is married to an attractive television
soap-opera star, Grayson said.
Peña Nieto is also a media-savvy politician.
He has spent tens of millions of dollars on television promotions,
and because he is young and handsome, his candidacy has been widely
covered by Mexico's largest television networks, Grayson said.
"And so he is not only on news programs, but he's on cooking
programs, children's programs, sports programs. You name it. He's
been all over the media nationwide for the last year or so, and so he
has incredible name recognition,' Grayson said.
If elected, Peña Nieto would return to power Mexico's once-dominant
PRI party. The autocratic PRI, which many Mexicans associate with
heavy bureaucracy and corruption, ruled Mexico with an iron grip for
more than seven decades until 2000, when PAN candidate Vicente Fox
was elected.
Since 2000, Mexico has been ruled by a member of the right-of-center
party, including the current president, Felipe Calderón, who is
finishing his six-year term. In Mexico, the president can only serve
one term.
In 2006, Calderón defeated Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a member of
the left-of-center PRD party, by a razor-thin margin. Lopez Obrador,
a champion of the poor, to this day maintains he was the legitimate
winner of the 2006 election. He has announced he is running again,
though he lags in the polls, Grayson said.
As of early December, the ruling PAN party still hadn't settled on a
presidential candidate. But the favorite, Josefina Vazquez Mota, a
former education secretary, could become Mexico's first female
president.
Whoever wins in July will inherit a bloody government crackdown on
drug cartels launched in 2006 by Calderón. More than 40,000 people
have died because of the crackdown, which has rocked the country's
stability to its core.
Even with the gravity of the issues, Mexicans have a lot of cynicism
toward politics in their country, Tinker Salas said.
"In that sense, I think the turnout will be affected by that," he said.
Low international turnout
Five years ago, just 28,335 Mexicans living in the United States, and
32,632 total living abroad worldwide, cast ballots. Of those, 1,121
mail-in votes came from Arizona, according to officials from Mexico's
Federal Election Institute.
That is a paltry figure, considering that, as of 2010, 11.7 million
people born in Mexico live in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census
Bureau. Of those, 10.8 million are of voting age, according to an
analysis of census figures by the Migration Policy Institute, a
nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
With 524,000 Mexicans, including 482,000 of voting age, Arizona has
the fourth-largest Mexican population of any state, according to the
institute. It ranks behind California, Texas and Illinois.
In 2006, Mexico's election agency spent $20 million promoting the
presidential election to Mexicans living abroad, mostly on television
advertisements, said Dalia Moreno Lopez, a Mexican election official
who visited Phoenix recently.
Given the 32,632 who voted, that comes out to about $613 per vote.
The 2006 election was the first time Mexicans living abroad were
allowed to vote without returning home, part of major election
reforms aimed at making Mexico more democratic following years of
voter fraud.
For the 2012 election, the Mexican election agency has two goals: to
increase voter participation from abroad and spend less money, Moreno
Lopez said.
"We are not expecting millions of voters," she said. "We are just
trying to improve."
Agency officials likely have their work cut out for them if the scene
at the Mexican consulate on a recent day is any indication.
At one point, a consular official stood at the front of the crowded
lobby and announced that a representative from the federal election
agency, known as IFE in Mexico, was waiting to assist anyone who
wanted to apply for a mail-in ballot.
But most of the people, who were there waiting to apply for Mexican
passports or other documents, simply did what Karen Mendez did:
walked right past the election table without filling out a form.
"As I was standing here, I was thinking, 'I really should' " apply
for a ballot, said Mendez, who was at the consulate to apply for a
Mexican passport. "But I really don't care about the elections."
Mendez, a 21-year-old community-college student who lives in Peoria,
said her life is more oriented toward the United States. Originally
from Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Mendez said she
has been living in the U.S. for five years and is in the process of
applying for citizenship. "I feel like I love Mexico, but I don't
think that is going to be my future," she said. "Maybe if I was still
in Mexico I would vote, but (now) I don't think so."
But Phoenix resident Irma Garcia, 62, a retired teacher from Mexico,
said she never misses an election. Unlike Mendez, she applied for a
mail-in ballot while at the consulate to buy a permit to drive into
Mexico for the holidays.
"It was easy," said Garcia, who is originally from Juchitlan, in the
central Mexican state of Jalisco.
Disaffected voters
Analysts say that despite the efforts of the Mexican election agency
to boost voter participation from abroad, they don't expect the
number to increase significantly for a variety of reasons.
"In this election, I would be surprised if more than 350,000 people
voted from abroad," said Jorge Bravo, a political-science professor
at Rutgers University in New Jersey who is an expert on Mexican
politics and Mexican migration to the U.S.
Many Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. left Mexico because they
were unhappy and "disaffected politically," Bravo said.
What's more, the longer Mexicans live in the U.S., the less likely
they are to care about elections in their home country, he said.
Recent arrivals are often "very, very busy" working and trying to
survive in the United States and also are unlikely to vote, he said.
Many Mexicans living in the United States, however, still have
relatives in Mexico, and therefore have a stake in the upcoming
presidential election, he said.
"It's clearly going to be a big election," Bravo said.
Simplified process: Mexico election agency eliminates mailing costs
to encourage voter turnout. A6
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/
2011/12/02/20111202mexico-united-states-voters.html#ixzz1gzmKZwMF
Dice Peña Nieto que no aceptará apoyo del narco
Patricia Dávila
21 de diciembre de 2011 · 35 Comentarios
http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=292293
MÉXICO D.F. (apro).- El candidato del PRI a la Presidencia de la
República, Enrique Peña Nieto, exigió al Instituto Federal Electoral
(IFE) revisar el cumplimiento de la legislación sobre precampañas,
con los aspirantes de los distintos partidos políticos.
"Se trata de revisar que todos, candidatos y precandidatos, cumplamos
con lo que marca la ley", dijo, y agregó que tal como lo anticipó el
líder nacional del PRI, Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, buscará un acuerdo de
civilidad con todas las fuerzas políticas, con respeto al electorado,
y para que la contienda se dé en los términos de propuestas e ideas y
no una campaña de lodo.
Sobre la necesidad de blindar las campañas electorales de la
presencia o influencia del crimen organizado, el exgobernador
mexiquense manifestó que debe evitarse a toda costa esa infiltración,
y aseguró que tanto él como todos los candidatos de su partido no
aceptarán un solo apoyo en ese sentido.
Ante el sector campesino del PRI, la Confederación Nacional Campesina
(CNC), Peña Nieto exigió al gobierno de Felipe Calderón intervenir
con fondos adicionales a los aprobados por la Cámara de Diputados,
para hacer frente a los efectos de la peor sequía que ha padecido
México en los últimos 70 años.
El PRI –dijo– está comprometido con el campo, y añadió que es momento
de demandar la atención urgente del gobierno federal, más allá de la
coyuntura por la que atraviesa ese sector de la producción.
"Es una desgracia nacional la que vive el campo mexicano, y no
atenderse, la hambruna y la crisis alimentaria se agudizarán con
consecuencias lamentables para nuestra soberanía nacional. Estos
oprobios nos están consumiendo y tenemos angustia por el porvenir",
señaló por su parte Gerardo Sánchez García, presidente del Comité
Ejecutivo Nacional de la CNC.
Tras ello, señaló que la CNC está de "plácemes" porque tiene como
invitado especial a Enrique Peña Nieto.
"Tengo que decirte, mi estimado amigo, que en la CNC siempre vimos en
ti al hombre, al político, al estadista por el que nos la jugamos, en
el que tenemos la esperanza de reconstruir al campo.
"La CNC siempre está contigo, porque sabemos que los retos y desafíos
que enfrenta México son mayúsculos y sólo un político como tú, con tu
temple, puede enfrentarlos contundentemente. Necesitamos líderes,
verdaderos líderes para recuperar la credibilidad y la confianza de
nuestro pueblo, de nuestra gente", puntualizó Sánchez García.
Apenas ayer, Coldwell dijo sobre Peña Nieto: "Tenemos al candidato
más sólido en muchos años, el mejor posicionado en las encuestas…
Está plenamente capacitado para gobernar el país y tiene las
destrezas que debe tener un político".
Luego de mencionar que las instituciones públicas que apoyan al campo
están desmanteladas y detallar los problemas a los que está
enfrentado ese sector, Sánchez García dijo a Peña Nieto:
"Tienes un reto enorme: recuperar a nuestra nación. Nada te puede
detener ni distraer de lo importante. Tienes en la CNC un gran
ejército para apoyarte".
Y advirtió: "Los adversarios no se detendrán, y nosotros menos. Nos
alienta el espíritu de la Revolución y nos motiva el corazón de las
Adelitas de México".
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