Free Republic

Caleron: tension was surpassed; reform is urgent He recognizes that narcotics trafficking gangs can put the state in danger Roberto Rock El Universal (Mexico City) Wednesday 17 January 2007 Institutions and the constitutional regime will surpass the challenge which the electoral crisis of last year signified, President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa assured today. For the first time since his arrival to the presidency, Calderon made an evaluation of the post-electoral situation which [the country] lived through in 2006: "It was a panorama of generalized anxiety. I saw the imperious necessity of assuming power with all its consequences, with control of the...

Marines settle in at San Lazaro1 Andrea Merlos & Ricardo Gomez El Universal Mexico City Thursday 30 November 2006 1:40 a.m.   At least ten trucks of the Marines of Mexico2 arrived in the early morning this Thursday at the Chamber of Deputies with 40 soldiers, each one of whom put himself in place on Congreso de la Unión Avenue. One day before the Toma de Protesta3 of Felipe Calderon as incoming President of the Republic, security was reinforced to the maximum in those squads who are covering the area up to the corner of Viaducto and Congreso de la...

Deputies act out new confrontation at the rostrum After the quarrel, the PRD Deputy for the State of Mexico, Alberto Lopez, had to be evacuated from the sessions room in a wheelchair Ricardo Gómez & Andrea Merlos El Universal Mexico City Tuesday 28 November 2006 4:56 p.m.   A new confrontation among federal deputies of the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was provoked at the foot of the rostrum of the Chamber of Deputies, which continues to be occupied by legislators of both factions. At 4:13 p.m., the legislators of both groups were...

Venezuela's presence in Mexican presidential investiture unconfirmed Mexico City. - The government of Venezuela still has not confirmed whether it will send a representative to Mexico to the presidential investiture of Felipe Calderon, the 1st of December, according to the official list circulated today by the Mexican presidency. The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who is seeking reelection in the elections which will be carried out in his country the 3rd of December, up to now has avoided recognizing Calderon's victory, among other reasons since he considers there were "strange things" in the Mexican elections. According to information released...

APPO will reactivate blockades in Oaxaca They also agree to extend their protests against the government over which Felipe Calderon Hinojosa will preside if when he begins his mandate Ulises Ruiz Ortiz still remains in his position [as Governor of Oaxaca]. Alejandro Torres & Jorge Octavio Ochoa/Correspondents El Universal (Mexico City) Oaxaca City, Oaxaca Monday 13 November 2006 1:17 p.m.   Reinstalling barricades, taking state public offices and town councils, and the closure of major highways are some of the conclusions which the constituent congress of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) approved upon concluding its work early...

The Oaxacanization of the Country: From the Myth of Fraud to that of Ingovernability It was left clear this week, the connection between the insurrectional strategy of Oaxaca and that of AMLO, which already seems to be weakening between desertions and the universal loss of prestige. The difference is one of perspective: For AMLO and his landscaped spaces it was considered vital to exhibit as a survival certificate the oxygen tank which he offered to the Popular Assembly of the People (sic) of Oaxaca (APPO) to identify its goal with that of the defeated presidential candidate: that of preventing...

Cardenas: Naming of AMLO a "Grave Error" The Moral Leader of the PRD indicates that the actions of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador "are pummeling and damaging all the Mexican Left." EFE News Service El Universal Madrid, Spain Monday, 18 September 2006 The actions of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador "are pummeling and damaging all the Mexican Left" and his naming as "legitimate President" in a voting of raised hands in the Zocalo capital plaza is a "grave error," according to the founder of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. In an interview with the Spanish daily newspaper La...

Convention Names AMLO "Legitimate President" After voting on this convention's proposals, the delegates agreed that they will not recognize Felipe Calderon as President-Elect nor the government which he heads 6:27 p.m. The resolutions of the Democratic National Convention designated Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as "Legitimate President." After voting on this convention's proposals, the delegates agreed that they will not recognize Felipe Calderon as President Elect nor the government which he heads. In the midst of shouts of acceptance, the sympathizers await the arrival of Lopez Obrador, as reported [on the radio program] Formato 21. More information shortly

Protest Encampment on Reforma Avenue is Slowly Being Removed In the stretch which goes from the Petroleum Fountain to the Zocalo capital square few guards are observed, there are now practically no kitchens, storage and food distribution centers Alejandra Martinez El Universal Mexico City Wednesday 13 September 2006 The protest encampments of the For the Good of All coalition which are located about the Paseo de la Reforma are beginning to be removed through an ant-like process, which is to say, in a discrete and gradual way. This Wednesday they have now initiated the removal of gas tanks, sound...

Ebrard's Group Throws Itself Against Cardenas Agustin Guerrero, director of the René Bejarano-supported National Democratic Left (IDN),1 qualified Cuauhtemoc Cardenas2 as a "traitor" to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). "Cardenas the Engineer3 is not with the PRD in principle nor with its project, and we did not sign a letter of renunciation, we simply made a decision to go to Fox's cabinet, because we are charging him there. That commission for the bicentennial of the celebrations of Independence is not an honorary post, it is a position which has a budget and pays him for organizing it; therefore...

The 10 Points of AMLO's Message Redaction EL UNIVERSAL.com.mx El Universal Mexico City Wednesday 6 September 2006 After the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) gave its qualification of the presidential election and declared Felipe Calderon President-Elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in his informative session [said the following]: 1. He accused the magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation of submission, "they did not have the courage, the dignity, the pride, the arrogance to act as free men," in ratifying the triumph of the PAN candidate. 2. He stated that he...

Fernandez Noroña: "We are arriving first at the Zocalo Capital Plaza" The PRD spokesman rejects that they can be evicted by federal forces, because "they will need some five policemen per protestor, because they will have to carry us away." "We are arriving first" at the Zocalo capital plaza of Mexico City, Gerardo Fernandez Noroña, spokesman of the PRD, maintained while arguing that they will celebrate the National Democratic Convention on this spot,1 independently of what the Mexican Army anticipates, which is that the 16th of September will be an Independence Day parade. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has summoned more...

Entire text of the message of President Fox to the nation Message of President Vicente Fox Quesada to the Nation on the occasion of his VI Government Report Mexican men and Mexican women: As President of the Republic, the Constitution obligates me to attend the Congress each year, to present before the Deputies and Senators, a report about the results of the management of the Federal Government. On this occasion, a group of legislators of the Party of the Democratic Revolution prevented the President of the Republic from being able to direct his message to the Congress and to the...

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: "They are stealing the presidency from me" Which are the elements making it possible to establish that there was fraud at the time of the elections of July 2 in Mexico? For more than three years we were victims of a campaign of all the state apparatus with the active participation of the President of the Republic because we represent an alternative project. Our adversaries wanted to destroy us politically. They tried to discredit me with the help of videos, but it was demonstrated that it was the acting out of a plot of former...

The PRD: Solid in its decision to fight the imposition of Calderon The national director of the the PRD warns that "if they perpetrate the imposition [of Calderon as President] we are going to mobilize wherever they attempt to give proof of his majority." Leonel Cota Montaño made clear that "we are not going to modify a single line of resistance which the For the Good of All coalition has maintained in demanding the transparency of the presidential election." The national leader of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) said that it will solidly oppose "the decision to...

Perredista,1 one third of the "Simulated Republic" AMLO wants to bring down Yesterday AMLO invoked constitutional Article 39 with everyone and made his appeal to the "people (who) have at all times the inalienable right of altering or modifying the form of their government." And he justified his appeal with the example of the Zapata uprising against President Madero, even though the Zapatista "Ayala Plan"2 was lauched in 1911, six years before the promulgation of the Constitution of 1917 and the vigorous entrance of its now publicized Article 39. But this inconsistency (of a grade school history book) is...

AMLO Summons a National Democratic Convention The PRD member evokes Article 39 of the Constitution to affirm that the people are the only ones who can change the government; he recalls the "Ayala Plan," signed by Emiliano Zapata. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador launched his call for a "National Democratic Convention For the Good of All," with its basis in Article 39 of the Constitution, to be held the 16th of September in the Zocalo capital square [in Mexico City]. The PRD member read said constitutional precept aloud and recalled that therein it is indicated that national sovereignty resides in...

Encinas warns that an institutional political crisis is near He indicates that the GDF1 will not permit elements of the Federal Preventive Police to go out from their assigned perimiters. The Head of Government of the Federal District, Alejandro Encinas, warned that [the country] is on the brink of passing from a post-electoral conflict to an institutional political crisis. "I believe that there are three objectives in the situation which our country is living through. I believe that we are passing from a post-electoral conflict to an institutional political crisis. Whoever does not want to see it as such,...

The TEPJF will begin alleviation of appeals of electoral inconformity The Ex-Executive Secretary of the IFE,1 Maria del Carmen Alanis Figueroa, assures that they will not open a single additional electoral packet. With the end of the partial recount of votes in the 11,839 electoral packets of the presidential election, the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation (TEPJF) now has all the elements to begin to alleviate the 374 appeals of electoral inconformity, according to Maria del Carmen Alanis Figueroa, Ex-Executive Secretary of the IFE. In her analysis of the phase that the tribunal is about...

Election authorities on Wednesday began a court ordered partial recount of the July 2 presidential vote that revealed minor errors during the first day´s ballot reviews. Officials from the Federal Electoral Institute supervised by 192 federal judges began reviewing ballots from 9 percent of more than 130,000 polling places. The recount is part of the process for the court to settle challenges brought by second-place candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims fraud. The court-ordered recount will probably narrow Calderón´s margin of victory, said Chappell Lawson, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Such an outcome could...