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"...it ain't over 'til we say it's over..."
 For a map, click here To read background reports in the Coahula state debt scandal, click here and follow the links.By Chris Covert The resignation of Humberto Moreira Valdes, seen as a proper end to the scandal which has been plaguing the young leader of Mexico's powerful Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), may have little of the desired effect. Moreira announced his resignation as leader of PRI last Friday after suffering weeks of calls for him to step down from those within PRI and near constant complaints from political Partido Accion Nacional members both in Coahuila state and in national venues about the massive acquisition of debt Coahuila contracted during Moreira's term as governor. Carlos Alberto Perez Cuevas, a deputy coordinator for PAN in the national Chamber of Deputies has called for a special panel to investigate state debt, not just in Coahuila. Although the proposal is probably political, PAN members have been calling for weeks to investigate debt acquired by states including Mexico state, nearly all of them states run by PRI governors.
The call for investigation by Perez Cuevas probably has more to do with the fact the PRI's leading contender for election for president of the republic, Enrique Pena Nieto, ended his tenure as governor as PRI's Eruviel Avila Villegas won a crushing victory winning more than 62 percent of the vote, a three to one margin over his nearest rival Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD) candidate Alejandro Encinas. That election and three others for governor and for local legislatures were another win for PRI's newest leader Moreira. At the time the election was seen as a bellwether for the political fortunes of Pena Nieto with Moreira as PRI's leader. In Mexican national politics, you can look awfully silly trying to take things at face value, so PRI federal deputy Carlos Flores Rico threw back into the face of his colleague Perez Cuevas the question of his "morals" when hundreds of migrant workers were killed in San Fernando, Tamaulipas during his tenure as a commissioner in Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion. The countercharge may look irrelevant, which it is, but it is also characteristic of how sensitive PRI leaders and members will be to the issue of debt contracted by Mexican states going into the 2012 presidential campaign. For all the unseemly pettiness of bringing attention to Coahuila's debt started by PAN national president Gustavo Madero, the full weight of the scandal appears yet to have hit. If it was Madero's objective to find something to counter the leviathan that is the PRI and its plans to return to Los Pinos in 2012 -- something that is politically cost free and which could dog Moreira into July, 2012 -- Madero could not have imagined the effect on display in Mexican press only a few days following Moreira's resignation. The only way the coming blows against PRI could be softened would be for Moreira to leave, which until last Friday he was unwilling to do. Prior to Moreira's exit Madero was looking at six solid months of no political cost attacks against Moreira and his candidate Pena Nieto, focussing in on at least one aspect of being president, sheer competence -- charges that neither PRI leaders could counter without bringing in Coahuila's massive debt into the debate. Moreira's resignation was the one option that could in the view of PRI's leadership eliminate the issue going in to 2012. So, citing party unity, Moreira fell on his own sword. Pena Nieto kept hammering in Mexican press on the theme of Moreira's selfless act over the weekend, saying he instead wanted to look to the coming campaign, AKA the future. The debt scandal which could threaten PRI's drive to return to the presidency was ended. At least, that was the idea. The other side of this debate, the debt itself is still weighing on Coahuila state. Monday it was announced that the total of Coahuila's debt rose as expected from MP $33.4 billion (USD $2,483,040,000.00) to MP $36 billion (USD $2,660,400,000.00), an annualized increase of almost 40 percent. The increase is due to a presumed failure to bring the 14 banks into agreement for refinancing the debt coupon and to a downgrading of Coahuila state debt by several debt rating agencies including Fitch's. Meanwhile in Mexico City, the national Secretaria de la Funcion Publica or Secretary for Public Functions said Monday it was opening an investigation into charges of official corruption relating to the Coahuila indebtedness. Salvador Vega Casillas said that his agency would look into the falsified documents at the center of the scandal which had been presented to the national ministry of finance. A federal auditor, Juan Manuel Portal said Monday that several Mexican states were shown to have some irregularities in contracting dabt, save for one, Tlaxcala. He also said that debt contracted in 2010, the lest full year of Moreira's term, was higher in several other states including Distrito Federal and Mexico state. Jose Armando Plata, a Coahuila state auditor said Monday that of the MP $36 billion in debt, MP $24 billion were long term, which had neither the authorization of the state Chamber of Deputies nor of Moreira himself. The last admission is startling because the primary means of turning short term debt into long is usually the process of securitization, or bundling loans and selling them as bonds in the open market. However, Armando Plata did not describe the nature of the long term debt. Armando Plata also considered it unlikely that Moreira was unaware of the falsification of documents, a condition this writer has maintained from the beginning. Another Coahuila state auditor, Jose A. Plata Sandoval said in a Proceso article posted Monday that he found no documents relating to indebtedness had been signed by Moreira, a fact which Plata Sandoval said probably exempted Moreira from responsibility. PAN political operative, Juan Molinar Horcasitas charged in a press conference Monday that much of the money generated from loan proceeds in Coahuila went to PRI coffers and to "los bolsillos de sus asociados", or partner's pockets, which is a charge until Monday largely hinted at rather than evoked. Molinar Horcasitas also said the actual debt total is likely higher than the MP $36 billion. Molinar Horcasitas probably suspected the higher debt amount charging that Coahuila's total debt payment outlays for the next 24 months was MP $2.75 billion (USD $203,225,000.00) representing 36 percent of the revenue it gets from federal revenue sharing from the federal government. It was not clear from Mexican media reports if the total of payments was debt reduction payment, coupon payments or both. Molinar Horcasitas said that the Coahuila state payroll tax, currently pledged as collateral to Mexican banks, is likely to go higher, not for the future, as he put it, but to pay "for the dances of Senor Moreira." As John "Bluto" Blutarsky might have said, "It ain't over 'til we say it's over..." Posted by: badanov 2011-12-06 |
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