By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Sunday evening's Mexican presidential debate, the second since the campaign began, may the the last chance the three main contenders for president of the republic will have to lay out their case to the Mexican public before the July 1st election.
Several news events could shape the upcoming debate, including a surprising if disappointing endorsement of Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) candidate Enrique Pena Nieto from former president Vicente Fox, current Mexican president Felipe Calderon Hinojona's immediate predecessor.
Fox's explicit endorsement earlier last week was probably in response to a poll published by Reforma news daily a week before that placed leftist candidate Andres Manual Lopez Orbador within four percentage points of Pena Nieto, despite every other nationwide poll giving Pena Nieto at least 20 percentage point over his rivals.
Fox's endorsement was followed by calls within Partido Accion National (PAN) to expel the former president from the party. Fox has in the past been given to outrageous comments on Mexican national politics. He has also expressed personal misgivings about the candidacy of PAN candiate Josefina Vazquez Mota.
Later in the week Fox walked back his comment a little by saying the bad old PRI could not wreak the kind of havoc that they had in the past explicitly because of the numerous reforms passed by himself and President Calderon. The walkback seemed to temper the controversy somewhat for the third place PAN.
Between the time of Fox's comments and the eve of the second presidential debate, however, polls have come out which, rather than redefine the race, have sharpened the distinctions among the candidates enough so the Reforma poll was tagged an outlier. Every presidential poll nationwide including GEA/ISA, Consulta Mitofsky and minor polls run by individual news outlets have Pena Nieto by as much as 20 percentage points, a lead which has held eerily without changing for 10 weeks, despite numerous and recent gaffes by Pena Nieto.
Not giving up. Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD) leader José de Jesus Zambrano Grijalva announced late last week that his own internal polling has Lopez Obrador leading Pena Nieto by four points. Zambrano was quick to point out the respondents were mostly urban dwellers, a voting block also hotly contested by PAN. PRI's strength lies in unions and peasant political organizations as well as urban dwellers.
PRD has been busily organizing demonstrations against the return of PRI to Los Pinos, the first being an anti Pena Nieto protest march two weeks ago in Mexican city. That gathering drew 22,500 protesters, many of them likely PRD militants and radical socialist elements such as the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME) or Mexican Electricians Union.
Three weeks ago a protest movement sprang up on several Mexican universities calling itself Yo Soy 132, which is a Mexican reference to the American "I am the 99 percent", like Yo Soy 132 an astroturf socialist organization attempting to democratize a republic.
Some of the agenda of Yo Soy 132 matches the agenda of PRD and its leader, Lopez Obrador including support for violent armed "resistance movements", presumably including the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (EZLN), which started and lost the Chiapas conflict in early 1994, as well as other armed Marxist guerilla movements which are still operational in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas states.
The SME is a supporter of EZLN as is Javier Sicilia, leader of the Movement for Peace Justice and Dignity. Sicilia was among the Mexican Catholic Church team which negotiated the January 1994 ceasefire. Many of the leaders of Sicilia's movement have been drafted onto at large slates of deputies. Far from maintaining the original mandate of his organization, Sicilia's only response to the news was to encourage his own supporters not to vote at all as a protest.
How much influence Yo Soy 132 will have on the current presidential contest is unclear, but the Mexican independent left has its fingerprints all over it including information operations. Since Yo Soy 132 became known, a second Pena Nieto love child has emerged, as have stories about his sexual preferences, the second of which was published a week ago in a Los Angeles Spanish language newspaper.
Pena Nieto is currently married to one of Mexico's most beautiful women, Mexican soap opera actress Angelica Rivera Hurtado.
This is taking a page from the PRI playbook. Many PRI politicians have used foreign Spanish language press to smear electoral opponents with planted news stories likely to affect voters' preferences.
The presidential debate, thanks to the efforts of Yo Soy 132, are to be televised by the Mexican Televisa media giant. The debate will also be live fed through many Mexican newspapers websites including Milenio. The debate begins at 1800 hrs.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
© Copyright 2012 by Chris Covert
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