Thursday, July 27, 2006
Mexico roundup
Both AMLO and FeCal insist that they are president.
PRD supporters picketed the Bolsa, the Mexican stock exchange, but did not block entry or exit.
Constitutional jurist Clemente Valdes has warned that a misstep by the electoral court could plunge Mexico into chaos. He did not rule out that the election could be annulled and sent to the Mexican Congress, but said that that would be a disaster.
Former electoral counselor Jaime Cardenas has said that the electoral court must examine the ballots. He said that the media and private enterprise had assumed the powers of the state to block AMLO's bid for a recount. The elections institute (IFE) has been badly weakened and is in need of reform. He says they need to do a full recount.
Elba Esther Gordillo of the PRI continues to dig herself deeper, calling Calderon the president elect. But her party, as represented by Senate leader Manio Fabio Beltrones, says the ballots should be counted. He also expresses strong opposition to privatization.
In the rumor category, El Sendero Fecal has some interesting stuff. One is a claim that La Gordita...er, Miss Gordillo... got 900 million pesos from Fox as an economic stimulus to labor. They continue to try to run down Calderon's thesis, using a database accessed at Arizona State. They have narrowed the possibilities to four: 1) Mr. Calderon wrote his thesis prior to 1861, when the thesis database begins, 2) He obtained a thesis, but not by a recognized institution, 3) he received a thesis from the JFK School as claimed in his biography, but the pro-Obrador marches have crashed the ASU computer system, or 4) he didn't do a thesis or a master's at Harvard.
Unfortunately, they missed one possibility: that he obtained a master's that didn't require writing a thesis. This seems to be the case.
This is a good example of why blogs, like newspapers, can make some real boners... but haven't yet gotten the nation mired in a senseless war or tangled up the presidency in answering baseless charges.
Something weird but true: Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the right-winger running the US drug farm in South America, is a Harvard grad, as is Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia. That's a lot of conservatives from such a supposedly liberal establishment.
More blogs about politics.
