[NYTr] Mexico: The Fine Art of Bad Elections

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Aug 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross08202007.html

Mexico's Broken Ballot Boxes

The Fine Art of Bad Elections

By JOHN ROSS

In its most revealing set of elections since the July 2006 fraud-marred
presidential balloting, this not-so-distant neighbor nation proved
conclusively that its electoral system is irreparably broken.

The August 5th vote-taking in Baja California Norte, the nation's
wealthiest state, to select a cohort for Upper California's action
figure governor featured an eccentric candidate given to wearing vests
fashioned from the penises of donkeys and a shaved-headed bureaucrat
from a party that has controlled the electoral machinery for 18 years,
in one of the filthiest electoral face-offs yet in a country where bad
elections are a fine art.

At the other end of Mexico at the same hour of the Baja California
fracaso, Oaxaca, a walking wound of a state where 26 activists have
been killed and hundreds wounded and jailed in an on-going revolt
against tyrannical governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, the much-dissed URO
locked up a "carro completo" (full car) when his party, the once-ruling
PRI (it has never lost power in Oaxaca) took 25 out of 25 districts in
the 42-seat state legislature with perhaps the highest absentee rates
ever recorded in a recent Mexican election.

The exact extent of the no-shows is inexactly quantified. On election
night, the State Electoral Institute (IEE) issued numbers confirming
that 77% of the Oaxaca electorate had stayed home. Two days later the
numbers were downsized to 63% - a late flurry of "votes" after the
polls were closed to paper over an embarrassing turn-out seems likely.

URO's electoral strategy called for elevated absenteeism, an ambiance
in which the PRI thrives. After consolidating the party's "voto duro"
or hard vote at a pair of massive PRI rallies masquerading as a
folklore festival (the "Guelaguetza"), Ruiz turned his attentions to
pumping up the "voto del miedo" or fear vote to scare away all other
voters. A guerrilla "bombing" at a local shopping mall hours before the
election helped to induce the desired psychosis.

Whether absenteeism hit 77% or a not much more respectable 63%, the
August 5th election which was set to explode with a bang went out with
a big whimper.

If Ulises, who won the governorship of Oaxaca in 2004 in the shadiest
of elections (the vote counting computers crashed thrice on election
night) was the big winner August 5th, the unquestioned loser was Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) whose left-center coalition took nine out
of 11 federal districts in state in 2006. AMLO visited Oaxaca six times
in the run-up to August 5th (not once in the final month) but his PRD
party shot itself in the foot by excluding nominees from either the
Oaxaca Popular Peoples Assembly (APPO) and dissident teachers, the
backbone of the social protest movement that has battled the governor
for more than a year.

While the dissidents called for a punishment vote ("voto de castigo")
against Ulises's PRI and President Felipe Calderon's right wing PAN,
they did not endorse the PRD. Indeed, many activists have grown
disaffected with the parties and their candidates and embrace the ethos
of the popular movement in Argentina during the 2002 crisis there: "Que
Se Vayan Todos" (that all the politicians should be kicked out.)

Ironically, the only bright spot for the PRD and/or the popular
movement in the PRI's August 5th landslide is that URO's party won so
many districts that it was excluded from occupying any of the seats
allocated to the parties by the percentage of the votes obtained and
the PRI's top "plurinuminal" candidate, former state prosecutor Lizbeth
Cana, a despised villain in last year's protests, was not seated.

Despite AMLO's big vote in the 2006 presidential race, the credibility
of the PRD in state and out (the party won only 2% of the vote in Baja
California) is bottoming into bankruptcy. One year to the date of the
fraud against Lopez Obrador, in an internal balloting for delegates to
its upcoming national congress, the PRD committed the same kind of
fraud against itself that Calderon's PAN committed against AMLO when
the New Left "current" (some call it a "tribe") claimed to have won 80%
of the delegates. Opposition "tribes" describe such time-honored
chicanery as "La Razarada" (erasing names from the voting lists) and
"El Raton Loco" (the crazy mouse), switching voting sites at the last
minute, as the fulcrum of the New Lefters' "victory."

Despite AMLO's injunction to the left not to recognize Felipe Calderon
as president, the New Left faction (sometimes known as "Los Chuchos"
due to the number of politicos named Jesus who hold the juice) seem to
have a fondness for negotiating with the PANista president, even
visiting with him in the Mexican White House, Los Pinos. New Left
control of the PRD is sure to widen the wedge between the party and
AMLO who has spent the past 11 months barnstorming Mexico signing up
more than a million supporters for his pet project, the National
Democratic Convention, which longtime observers prognosticate will soon
split with the PRD and become Lopez Obrador's own party.

The debacle in Baja California Norte threw two unlikely contenders into
the ring. Jose Guadalupe Osuna, a mild-mannered ex-mayor of Tijuana for
Calderon's PAN - 18 years ago Baja California became the first state in
which the PRI allowed the opposition to win and the PAN has ruled ever
since - and, in the PRI corner, the scion of the once-ruling party's
topdog political boss, Carlos Hank Gonzalez whose most celebrated
contribution to the PRI's Book of Wisdom is that "a poor politician is
a bad politician", a piece of advice taken to heart by his son, Jorge
Hank Rhon.

Hank Rhon is the kingpin of Mexico's gaming industry with 102 "Aguas
Calientes" off-track betting parlors spread around the country (but
mostly clustered on the border to suck in those Yanqui dollars.) From
January to June of this year, according to Finance Secretary numbers,
Hank's gambling dens raked in eight billion pesos - a big chunk of the
windfall was funneled into the gubernatorial campaign of "El
Padrino" (a favorite nickname), which the Godfather ran out of his
Tijuana dog track.

Hank's only previous political experience is as the current mayor of
Tijuana, having won office two years ago with the lowest turnout in
that border city's history. The PRIista's triumph was not so much
attributed to his pristine resume as it was the fruit of years of PAN
bumbling and a flourishing narco-infused crime wave. Then as now, Hank
Rhon ran as an unlikely law and order candidate.

It is difficult to portray Jorge Hank as a victim but the PAN pulled
out every dirty trick in its repertoire to thwart his gubernatorial
ambitions. In May, at a critical juncture two months before the vote,
the PAN-controlled state electoral tribunal barred El Padrino from
appearing on the ballot - his candidacy was reinstated by the nation's
top electoral court a full month later. The PANista Queen Bee, Elba
Esther Gordillo, lifetime boss of the nation's education workers union,
led a thousand electoral operators ("mapaches" or raccoons) into the
state to create the same kind of mischief as they committed against
AMLO in July 2006. Like AMLO, PAN hit pieces labeled Hank "a danger to
Mexico."

To garnish the flimflamery, on election eve a state judge issued arrest
orders for three top Tijuana cops, all Hank appointees, for protecting
the narco-cartels who are the power behind the throne in Baja
California, further trashing Jorge Hank's already bad name.

Jorge Hank has long been accused of playing footsy with the Arellano
Feliz cartel - he was once photographed in a local saloon with its
leaders. The former head of security at his dog track is currently
serving a life sentence for a hit on a crusading journalist who dared
to signify that Jorge Hank could be gay in print - ZETA, of which the
late Hector "El Gato" Felix was an editor, ran a weekly full page ad
for ten years under the Gato's byline asking "Jorge Hank, why did you
kill me?" Despite these anomalies, Hank ran for governor on a law and
order ticket.

Jorge Hank Rhon is also Mexico's Numero Uno endangered species dealer
with his own private zoo on the grounds of the dog track that
spotlights rare tigers, the Godfather's totem animal. Legend has it
that Jorge once flew a panda into the country strapped into the
co-pilot's seat of his private jet. Back in the '90s, U.S, Fish &
Wildlife entrapped Hank Rhon's chief buyer trying to buy a gorilla in
Boca Raton, Florida - the gorilla turned out to be an agent in a
gorilla suit - and United States Immigration agents once stopped him
from driving a Siberian tiger into Mexico. The big cat was perched in
the back seat.

Hank's sartorial proclivities are not limited to his celebrated donkey
dong vest - he was once busted with several overcoats made from the
pelts of the last eight ocelots in Mexico. A liberal soul, Hank Rhon
considers women to be "my favorite animal" (sic) and is a notorious
breeder with 19 offspring. The candidate claims that drinking tequila
in which a lion's penis is embalmed increases his virility.

The Baja California balloting was not sedate. "Zafaranchos" (brawls)
broke out during candidate debates at high-class hotels. But election
day was a more staid event with somberly dressed voters lining up at
the polling booths - state election law bars the wearing of party
colors in the "casillas" and donning red, blue, green, and yellow, or
any combination thereof could get a voter disqualified.

Although pre-election polls indicated that Kid Hank had come from 18
points down to put him in a virtual dead heat with the PANista Osuna on
elation day, by nightfall he was trailing by eight points. Depressed by
the lopsided thumping, El Padrino retreated behind the doors of his dog
track for two days until PRI chieftain Beatriz Parades coaxed him out
long enough to concede defeat. The PRI later said it would challenge
the outcome because of the PAN's virulent anti-Hank hit campaign.

Results from state elections since the July 2006 magna-fraud have been
mixed. A PRIista running as a PRDista won the Chiapas governorship but
a PRIista running as a PRDista lost Lopez Obrador's (a former PRIista
himself) state of Tabasco in 2006. In February of this year, the PRD,
which governs the state of Zacatecas, lost control of the local
legislature to the PRI after the leftists split. On the same day, the
PRI squeezed out the PAN in Chihuahua and the PAN returned the favor in
next-door Durango. Two months later, the niece of the legendary PRI
cacique (political boss) the late Victor Cervera Pacheco won Yucatan
back from the PAN, which had run the show for the last six years.

But the big winner in each and every one of these electoral farces has
been rampant and widespread absenteeism as the credibility of the
political parties and the electoral authorities hit rock bottom,
confirming what July 2006 proved - the Mexican electoral system is
irreparably broken.

[John Ross is in Mexico City, plotting a new novella. If you have
further information contact johnross at igc.org]