|
2nd Mexican presidential debate ends
 For a map, click here By Chris Covert Rantburg.com The second Mexican presidential debate concluded late Sunday evening with Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota the overall winner, but with the polls showing very little movement away from the front runner. Unlike the first debate, very few surprises distracted from the discussion, which were somehow more muted than the first, given how steadily frontrunner Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) Enrique Pena Nieto has held such a large lead over all his rivals since the very start of the campaign. Not that Pena Nieto's rivals haven't tried to close the gap: In a published report report by the Guardian UK news daily last Thursday, documents reportedly emerged which alleged that the Latin American media giant Televisa had received money and contracts, presumably from PRI and PAN politicians including Pena Nieto for favorable coverage and to fund smear campaigns against their political rivals. This latest foreign press report comes on the heels of another report last week which alleges Pena Nieto carried on an illicit homosexual affair while governor of Mexico state. That report appeared last week in a Los Angeles Spanish language newspaper. The Guardian report said the publication obtained computer files downloaded and sent to them by Yessica de Lamadrid, another purported former lover of Pena Nieto, then an employee of Televisa subsidiary Radar Servicios Especializados, which purports to show transfers of funds between PRI and PAN politicians and Televisa dating back to the start of Pena Nieto's term as Mexico state governor in 2005. The report also shows that not only did Pena Nieto pay Televisa for its services, but Televisa was also paid to sabotage the Mexican presidential candidacy of Andres Lopez Obrador in 2006 in a smear campaign. Despite the scandalous tone of the report, the principal source obtaining the computer files downloaded and sent to the Guardian, Yessica de Lamadrid, disclaimed the documents as forged, adding yet another strange layer to the story. Televisa has denied the story, pointing out numerous inconsistencies in the narrative by the writer, Jo Tuckman, and the fact that no wrongdoing had been uncovered. The documents were originally obtained by leftist journalist Jenaro Villamil and published in 2005 in Proceso news weekly, so it is hard to see how the Guardian report is more than a rehash of old news, other than another clumsy information operation by the Mexican independent left gone awry. The fact is the Mexican politicians usually maintain public relations budgets, and lavish ones at that. Pena Nieto did, as did the leftist candidate Andres Lopez Obrador while governor of Distrito Federal. Each of their public relations budgets became, albeit briefly, issues in the first debate and for a very short time afterwards. That is probably why Vazquez Mota was first out of the gate with a proposal to "eliminate the political class", as she put it, first by eliminating the at-large slates in both houses of the Mexican national legislature. The irony is not lost on either her supporters or her detractors that Vazquez Mota herself was an at-large federal deputy, and may well have never reached her high status in PAN without that position, as well as the gratitude for some of the help as a political fixer she rendered to Mexican President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa. Pena Nieto also came out in favor of eliminating the at-large slates, prompting PAN president Gustavo Madero Munoz to wag on Twitter (paraphrasing), "Hallelujah! [PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto] read the PAN proposal presented in 2009 by [President Felipe Calderon] to reduce the at-large 100 deputies and 32 senators." Not to be outdone, Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD) candidate Lopez Obrador weighed in also approving the reform, adding later he would take money saved from austerity and transfer it to food and income aid for the poor. Lopez Obrador continued with a familiar theme in the debate by insisting that were he elected president, he would eliminate Mexico's flat tax known as Impuesto Empresarial a Tasa Unica (IETU). Lamenting Mexico's growth has been half of other countries,he also proposed an annual growth rate of six percent, warning, darkly that without jobs there is no growth and without welfare there can be no social peace. Throughout the evening, given the format of the debate, Pena Nieto dodged barbs from his rivals. The worst barb came from Vazquez Mota when she accused Pena Nieto of hiding from students, a reference to the Universidad de Iberoamericana fiasco a few weeks ago in which unruly university students raucously reminded Pena Nieto of his first year as governor of Mexico, when the San Salvador Atenco protest took place, during which two lives were taken at the hands of Pena Nieto's state police. Numerous complaints were also registered concerning sexual abuse by Pena Nieto security forces in the aftermath. Pena Nieto calmly protested he faced the students and did not run. The charge was rather odd, because in no reports this writer read did Pena Nieto do anything but face up to the protesters. PRI president Pedro Caldwell had made demands for an investigation into the protest, but those calls were later and quickly muted. The second Mexican debate resolved little in the political arena except for the status quo with Pena Nieto holding a near insurmountable lead with less than three weeks to go. Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com © Copyright 2012 by Chris Covert You must obtain permission to reprint this article. Posted by: badanov 2012-06-11 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=346388 |
