Note: Have gotten several notes on the news of Cuba having a
facility for manufacture of ammunition. That along with Venezuela
having a facility for manufacture/assembly of AK's also from the
Russians, would advance the respective agendas of destabilizing
Mexico and by extension weakening the U.S.
Note: The election in Michoacan was delivered to the PRI courtesy of
the drug cartels. Can we expect the same in the presidential
election in 2011? The PRI has a well earned reputation for massive
corruption. If they regain the government in 2012 it will be very
bad for Mexico and us.
Loan scandal topples head of Mexico's PRI party
Humberto Moreira steps down as the scandal over borrowing in Coahuila
state threatened to derail the PRI's bid to retake power in elections
next year.
December 3, 2011
Reporting from Mexico City—
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-
election-20111203,0,6694000.story?track=rss
Humberto Moreira, president of Mexico's former ruling party, quit his
post Friday amid a swelling financial scandal that threatened to
throw off the party's bid to retake power in next year's elections.
Moreira has been hammered for months by charges that in his previous
job as governor of the northern state of Coahuila, he left it saddled
with $3 billion in debts, at least partly due to loans allegedly
sought using falsified documents.
Moreira, who was named head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party,
or PRI, early this year, has denied wrongdoing, saying the heavy
borrowing took place after he left the governorship in January to run
for the national party post.
The state was run by a stand-in governor, Javier Torres, until
Thursday, when Moreira's brother, Ruben, took over. Both are members
of PRI. Ruben Moreira was elected governor in July.
Humberto Moreira announced his resignation before a televised
gathering of the PRI's political council, saying he would not allow a
"war in the media" to hurt his party.
The debt controversy was becoming a drag on the PRI even as early
polls show it poised to retake power in Mexico 12 years after being
unseated. The scandal threatened to remind voters of the sort of
graft that characterized the PRI's 70-year reign just when it is
seeking to promote a fresh, cleaned-up image.
The federal attorney general's office said it has opened an
investigation of possible wrongdoing over the Coahuila debt.
Moreira's departure appeared to become inevitable when the PRI's lone
presidential candidate, former Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto of the state
of Mexico, acknowledged this week that the scandal was taking a toll.
Many analysts predicted that Moreira would step down after
gubernatorial elections were held Nov. 13 in the western state of
Michoacan. The PRI won, defeating the sister of Mexico's conservative
president, Felipe Calderon.
That victory continued the winning streak the PRI has been on since
it regained control of Congress' lower house in 2009.
The PRI's top post will for now be held by its secretary-general,
Cristina Diaz. But reports say the post could soon go to Manlio Fabio
Beltrones, an old-guard senator who mounted a halfhearted campaign
for the party's presidential nomination before yielding to Pena Nieto
last week.
During nine months as party president, Moreira was known for a
combative style. He hit back at charges that the party coddled drug
lords, noting acerbically that when the PRI was in control, the
country's top suspect, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, was in custody. Guzman
escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001, after the right-wing National
Action Party, or PAN, took over.
But the months-long borrowing scandal proved difficult to shake. The
staggering debt burden has created a financial crisis in Coahuila.
The loan requests allegedly carried false declarations that the
Coahuila Legislature had approved the borrowing, from private banks.
Coahuila officials have said the funds were used for public works,
but have yet to account for the money.
Moreira has called for an investigation into the role played by the
federal Finance Ministry, which cleared the loans. The former finance
minister, Ernesto Cordero of the PAN, left that post in September to
run for his party's presidential nomination.
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