Thank you very much for the link on public opinion, that is something I've been waiting to see. Not only that, I'm very happy to see it. And I have seen the weather reports. The amount of hail at this time of the year seems especially unusual.
Okay, now that I'm caught up with my work, I have time to post an update for everyone.
First; to get back to the recount numbers, I was expecting to see some hard figures today and I must report that I have not. So for those of you who remember that I said I anticipated posting some authoritative numbers by now, well, I know nothing more than yesterday, when we were left with competing numbers from the PRD, who claimed that the recount would show a 14,000 vote reduction in Calderon's margin of victory, and PAN, who said the diminution was more like 6,000 while everyone waited on the tribunal to review the disputed ballots, which they think may improve Calderon's margin of victory. But either way, the PRD did not get enough movement in the vote, as almost every news site I have visited maintains. And I cannot say when we are going to hear anything because they have announced that one missing electoral packet from Nuevo Leon, which has been found,
would be recounted today and
the tribunal has announced that tomorrow's session "will not touch the presidential election."
Now; on the ongoing fallout in Mexico City from the crackdown on the PRD demonstrators trying to set up an encampment on the grounds of the Mexican National Congress, there is a considerable war of words underway. The PRD is making a big deal out of the fact that
six of their legislators were injured, including two women. The
PRD has threatened that they will return to erect a protest encampment on the legislative grounds within 15 days. And the goal clearly is to disrupt Vicente Fox's scheduled national address, which he will make to the Mexican Congress on September 1. PRD spokesman Gerardo Fernández Noroña has publicly promised that
September 1 will not be a "day in the countryside" for Vicente Fox. This is shaping up to be exactly what
I posted yesterday, which is that September 1 is "High Noon," or a showdown looming ahead as Lopez Obrador and his supporters have made clear their determination to disrupt Fox's address. And following up on the article opening this thread, agencies of the Federal District Government are adding their own voices to those of their boss, PRD Governor Alejandro Encinas, in criticizing the federal police crackdown at the Mexican Congress yesterday. The Secretary of Public Security of the Federal District
charged the Federal Preventive Police with acting in a "disorderly, excessive manner, and evidencing a lack of control." He later held a press conference in which he presented a video of the action and
further charged the PFP with an "excessive use of force." The individual gave what he described as the "official position" of the Federal District Government that "the aggression was not justified," and in what I personally consider PRD "double-speak," added that "dialogue and working together is the better form of resolving the problems that actually confront the county." I'm hoping that video gets put up on the web. It it is, I'll post a link.
Meanwhile, back at the PRI, the ousted political party is starting to make some noise of its own, and it's mostly anti-PRD. The Secretary General of the PRI in the Federal District, Jorge Schiaffino,
publicly held PRD Governor Alejandro Encinas responsible for the current tension in Mexico City and according to the article describing his statement, showed some very angry rhetoric for a political party not directly caught up in the PAN-PRD struggle. This is what was written: "
He [Schiaffino] insisted that Encinas has the obligation to preserve the rights and constitutional guarantees of the majority of the capital residents, by reason of which he must cease acting as an 'infamous activist' of the PRD and if he doesn't do this, then he should renounce his charge as Head of Government [of the Federal District] 'if he has any dignity left.'" And PRI legislators also made a
joint statement that was not quite so clear as their party leader in the DF, in which they asked for guarantees of security for themselves for September 1 and asked both sides to come together in dialogue.
And Vicente Fox has only
called upon the citizenry "to defend democracy" and its institutions. But he did add that he "
will assume his responsibility if the social conflict aggravates" further. And on that note,
there are now 600 Federal Preventive Police patrolling the legislative grounds, ostensibly at Fox's orders. And Fox and Calderon's PAN party is
pushing for legal action to remove Encinas from his job as Head of Government in the Federal District, a complaint presented to the Procurator General of the Republic today, though I suspect that is not going to happen just yet.
That's all for now folks. Let's see if tempers cool a bit in Mexico City tomorrow.
