The Rag Blog

Bill Neiman — a leader in the movement to conserve natural resources and restore the heath of the environment in Texas — was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Friday, April 13, originally broadcast on KOOP-FM in Austin.

Neiman is also an environmental landscaper and his Native American Seed is the principal supplier of native wildflower and grass seeds in Texas. An advocate of the use of native species of vegetation in landscaping, Neiman warns that we must have a paradigm shift in our relationship to the land. Listen to the podcast of the interview at this post.

Beginning with words from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” — “The horror! The horror!” — Mike Hanks takes us first through the darkness — the horror and futility of the U.S. drug war in Mexico — and then we move towards the “spark of light” Diego Huerta has created with his ambitious photographic project, “31K Portraits for Peace,” on exhibit at Austin’s Mexic-Arte Museum, which features thousands of striking and poignant photos of ordinary Mexican citizens holding origami doves of peace. The post includes a gallery of photos from the exhibit.

By Philip L. Russell / The Rag Blog /

March 30 marked the official start of the Mexican presidential campaign. Prior to that date candidates were officially prohibited from campaigning. The campaign lasts for 90 days, followed by a one-round election on July 1. The candidate with the most votes, even if they are less than a majority, wins.

The current front-runner, with 51 percent of the voters who declared a preference, is Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic, 45-year-old candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

After graduating from law school he went into politics, following the footsteps of generations of his forbears in his native State of Mexico. During the 1990s he held various positions in state government and later served in the state legislature. This, as well as his family connections, propelled him into the governorship of the state for the 2005-2011 term.

Peña Nieto, who is married to TV star Angélica Rivera, is widely viewed as all image and no content. As columnist Jorge Zepeda Patterson observed, ”People will vote for him because he’s good looking, because he looks presidential. Period. He and his wife form a fairy-tale couple portrayed favorably by the two major TV networks, both of which favor him.”

Peña Nieto stresses that his positive record as governor of the State of Mexico — Mexico’s most populous state — qualifies him to be president. Such a view if far from unanimous. Veteran human rights activist Sergio Aguayo commented that Peña Nieto’s record “oscillated between mediocrity and catastrophe.” In any case, Peña Nieto’s hand-picked successor won the gubernatorial race handily in 2011, bolstering the image of his governorship.

Peña Nieto emphasizes that it’s time to oust the incumbent National Action Party (PAN), since during the 12 years its two presidents have been in office both violence and the number of poor people have increased. He also stresses that as a result of what he calls a “dysfunctional state,” economic growth during the last decade has been slower than it has been during any other decade since the Depression.

Observers have attached the term Teflon candidate to Peña Nieto, since so far none of his gaffes have significantly lowered his approval rating. The most conspicuous of these gaffes was his not being able to — at a book fair yet! — state which three books have most influenced him. His strategy is to avoid unscripted encounters and to refrain from making bold proposals which might cost him some of his heterogeneous base.

Peña Nieto received the nomination of his party by default, after it became obvious that he was far more popular than any other potential candidate. The PRI, which emerged from among the victorious generals of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917, is both Peña Nieto’s greatest asset and his greatest liability.

Many feel that if the PRI regains the presidency, there will be a return to the authoritarianism that characterized the party’s 71-year-long hold on the Mexican presidency. A more optimistic view portrays a new PRI constrained by a congress chosen by real elections and by a supreme court which actually rules against the executive branch.

Even though many are wary of a PRI return to Los Pinos, the presidential residence, the party offers by far the best get-out-the-vote machine in Mexico—the result of decades of political control and the 20 governorships currently in PRI hands. Such a machine could prove to be crucial in an election where grass-roots enthusiasm has been in short supply.

Trailing Peña Nieto has been PAN candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota, with 28 percent of those declaring a candidate preference. She received an economics degree and subsequently served as a business consultant and public speaker.

She transitioned to politics after she caught the attention of the wife of the PAN governor of the state of Guanajuato, who introduced her to the governor. This resulted in her being nominated to a seat in Congress. She soon resigned her congressional seat to serve as President Fox’s secretary of welfare, a powerful post in the federal government.

In 2006 she resigned her cabinet post to manage Felipe Calderón’s foundering presidential campaign. After Calderón won his hotly disputed election, he appointed her as secretary of education. She had limited impact while serving in that post because she failed to wrest power from the powerful head of the teacher’s union. In 2009 she returned to the Chamber of Deputes where she became coordinator of the PAN delegation.

Her sights soon turned to the upcoming 2012 presidential race. The PAN alone among the parties staged a primary election to select its presidential candidate this year. Vázquez Mota won 54 percent of the 515,000 votes cast by registered PAN members and supporters, making her the first Mexican woman to be nominated for the presidency by a major party. The two males she defeated quickly united behind her candidacy.

Vázquez Mota is playing on her womanhood, announcing, “We are going to demonstrate that Mexico is ready for its first woman president.” She also noted in her victory speech after winning the primary that her experience raising a family would serve her as president.

She raises the specter of another PRI administration ushering back the authoritarianism and corruption associated with past PRI administrations. She is less clear on what she is for, other than improving education and creating 16 million scholarships so poor children can afford to remain in school longer.

She has proposed a coalition of parties to overcome the lack of decisive government action which has plagued both PAN administrations. Finally, although culture wars are much less significant than in the United States, she has stated her opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

Given widespread rejection of the violence associated with incumbent PAN President Felipe Calderon’s crime-fighting policy and dissatisfaction with slow economic growth, Vázquez Mota’s greatest challenge is to establish her independence from the policies of the incumbent PAN president. At some point she must offer an alternative to what political scientist Silvia Gómez Tagle characterized as “more of the current policies of Felipe Calderón, which haven’t worked.”

The PAN candidate also needs to overcome the perception that she smiles and talks a lot but is weak on content. Her speeches have been compared to those of motivational speakers — full of optimism and positive attitude, but lacking specifics. Columnist Sergio Sarmiento made this biting comment, “She prefers to fill the spaces with words rather than with ideas.”

Her party, the PAN, was organized in the 1930s as a conservative response to government anti-clericalism, President Lázaro Cárdenas’ (1934-1940) reforms, and the lack of democracy. In the last quarter of the 20th century the party saw a massive influx of businessmen, including future president Vicente Fox, who felt the PRI was wrecking the economy.

Since the PAN assumed power at the federal level in 2000, the party has suffered from its failure to achieve promised rates of economic growth and from violence associated with Calderón’s anti-crime campaign. It has become increasingly hard to determine how the PAN is different from the PRI, which it replaced.

Indeed Manuel Clouthier, son of an iconic PAN presidential candidate with the same name, left the party in 2012, declaring the PAN had “sunk to practices exactly like those which the PAN fought before taking power… It has been totally corrupted by power.”

The third major candidate is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, widely referred to simply as AMLO. He was the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 2006 and was declared to have lost the 2006 election by less than a percentage point after having maintained a commanding lead during most of the campaign.

Rather than leading the pack this year, only 20% of those polled expressed a preference for him, in large part due to his having alienated much of his base due to his refusal to recognize his election loss and his leading major protest demonstrations which tied up Mexico City for months.

AMLO first drew national attention protesting stolen elections in his home state of Tabasco and the national oil company’s running roughshod over those whose land and fishing grounds had been ruined by oil operations.

AMLO then moved to the national scene, heading the PRD and serving as mayor of Mexico City. His popularity as mayor positioned him for his 2006 presidential campaign, which was derailed by a massive wave of illegally funded attack ads.

For his 2012 campaign AMLO has attempted to moderate his image, declaring on the opening day of his campaign that “honesty, justice and love — lots of love,” would characterize his administration. Rather than referring to Mexico’s businessmen as a “mafia,” as he did in the past, he now courts them and refers to them as the motor of the economy.

Many question the sincerity of his shift in style between 2006 (and before) when he was much more confrontational. In fact the press often refers to the new López Obrador as AMLOve. Crucial to Lopez Obrador’s pulling out of third place will be convincing the Mexican public he is not a Romney-like flip-flopper who is tailoring discourse to what he believes the Mexican people want to hear.

The three keys to AMLO’s economic plans are lowering energy costs, combating monopolies, and lowering costs of government. Lowering the costs of electricity and gasoline would, although he doesn’t not acknowledge it, increase the already massive subsidy the government provides the middle and upper classes who consume a disproportionate share of energy.

His goal of fighting monopolies is more straightforward, but risky in a campaign. Targeting monopolies would involve the taking on the two media giants controlling television — the very medium which will filter the information the vast majority of Mexicans rely on to make their candidate selection.

While promising not to increase debt, inflation or taxes, AMLO advocates stimulating the economy to create 1.2 million jobs a year. Rather, he promises to finance economic stimulus by ending monopolies, lowering salaries of overpaid government functionaries, and eliminating corruption.

Reversing decades of neoliberal policy, he urges a major role for government in implementing an industrial policy and creating public works. AMLO defends the icon of Mexican nationalism, the national oil company Pemex. In an AMLO administration no private capital will taint it. In addition, he proposes to end oil exports and refine Mexican oil locally in five new refineries.

AMLO shows his left roots in formulating security policy. Instead of advocating more guns and jails, he proposes ending drug-related violence by providing jobs and educational opportunities for young people so that they will not be tempted by employment offered by criminal gangs. More immediately he advocates creating a new federal police force which within six months would replace the military in combating organized crime.

If he is to move up during a short three-month campaign, AMLO must make some bold moves. As of now his economic plans smack of the revolutionary nationalism of 1960s and 1970s. Such policies indeed produced high growth then, but are of questionable relevance in today’s world. Similarly there is sound logic behind his statements on drug-related violence.

However it would take years for his economic policy, even if successful, to offer well-paid jobs to the millions flooding the labor market, the result of record high births in the 1990s. So far AMLO (and the other candidates) have failed to embrace the notion of drug legalization which is building momentum throughout Latin America.

AMLO received the 2012 nomination of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) after he edged out the mayor of Mexico City in a voter preference poll. Both presidential aspirants had previously agreed that the winner of the poll would be the left’s presidential candidate.

AMLO is not only the candidate of the PRD but of two other small left parties. This is an important advantage in a multiple-candidate one-round election. In 2006, the candidate of a small left party drew more votes than the difference between AMLO’s vote total and that of Felipe Calderón, the declared winner.

In addition AMLO has the support of a nationwide grassroots organization known as MORENA, which he has built up by traveling to all of Mexico’s 2000-plus municipios during the last six years.

While AMLO has the unified left behind him, his being the nominee of the PRD may well prove to be problematic. Coming up with policy suggestions has been difficult for the PRD — a dilemma shared by the left throughout post-Cold War Latin America.

Another challenge faced by the PRD is that the party has been so riven by factions that power struggles within the party often overshadow its policy proposals. Media coverage of the party frequently portrays the factions as “tribes.” Repeatedly the “tribes” have been so intent on gaining control of the PRD that they have attempted to rig elections for party posts. Such shenanigans hardly make the general public feel comfortable with the notion of the party administering Mexico.

The great unknown is what impact the internet and social media will have on the elections. Before March 30 all the candidates were making use of social media to get out their message since it did not fall under the government ban on campaigning before that date.

During the first week of the official campaign social media served to highlight a series of minor campaign snafus by the Vázquez Mota campaign — messages that appeared to be managed by the well-oiled PRI media machine. Social media could shape opinion, get out the vote, or simply get lost in the millions of TV spots Mexicans will be bombarded with before July 1.

As columnist Juan Enríquez Cabot observed, so far a lack of enthusiasm and hope have characterized the campaign. Moderation, not confrontation, is the dominant theme. Disappointment with the results of the transition to democracy in 2000 pervades the electorate. Compounding this is the notion, shared by many U.S. Republicans during the primary season, that the choices on the ballot are less than sterling.

Observers have also commented on the similarity of the candidates’ proposals. Zepeda Patterson declared the security proposals of the three candidates “are vague, ill defined, and virtually interchangeable.” All have proposed higher economic growth and fighting corruption — standard campaign fare for decades.

To close on a positive note, Mexicans do not feel corporations are people. Rather than following the Citizens United line of “reasoning,” Mexico strictly prohibits corporations from funding candidates or buying airtime to influence the election.

The amount private citizens can donate is sharply limited, allowing public financing to pay the bulk of campaign costs. TV campaign ads are broadcast without charge to either candidates or government. As a condition for getting a broadcast license, networks are required to provide a certain percent of airtime to the government. The government then allocates this airtime to campaigns so they can broadcast spots without being beholden to donors.

In addition the government makes substantial cash transfers to the political parties so they can campaign effectively and get their message out.

Austin, Texas-based writer Philip L. Russell has written six books on Latin America. His latest is The History of Mexico: from Pre-Conquest to Present (Routledge). Frequently updated information on the Mexican presidential campaign can be found in chapter 30 of www.mexicofrompreconquesttopresent.com .]

The Rag Blog

By David P. Hamilton / The Rag Blog /

Voting in this year’s French presidential election begins on April 22 and will provide an important opportunity for the Left. In the first round, there will be candidates representing 10 political parties, half of them leftist, including the Socialist, Left Unity, Green, New Anti-capitalist, and Worker’s Struggle parties.

This is fewer than in 2007 when there were 12 parties and in 2002 when there were 16. If no one wins a clear majority in the first round, an event that has never come close to happening previously, the two leading candidates advance to a run off on May 6.

The French electoral system

There are major differences between the U.S. and French procedures for electing a president.

In stark contrast to the U.S., corporate financing of political campaigns in France is strictly illegal. Individual contributions are limited to about $6,000 and must be thoroughly documented if over 150 euros ($200). This is not to say that political corruption does not exist. Envelopes full of cash are doubtless passed under the table.

Sarkozy is currently being investigated, accused of accepting millions during his 2007 campaign from Colonel Gaddafi of Libya and Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune and the richest woman in France.

High level officials have been prosecuted for political corruption, including recent ex-president Jacques Chirac who was found guilty, but given a suspended sentence. Sarkozy will very likely be prosecuted when he leaves office and looses his immunity.

In the US, thanks to the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, such political bribery is considered free speech. In France there is an official campaign period of about one month. During this period all candidates are given free and equal media time, 43 minutes each divided into 18 segments of 90 seconds to 3½ minutes during which they may state their case.

They are not allowed to solicit funds or disparage their opponents. No other mass media political advertising, such as inundates the U.S., is permissible. Campaigns thus cost a very small fraction of what they cost in the U.S.

The amount that campaigns can spend is also strictly limited, to only about 20 million euros ($28 million) for each of the two candidates that reach the run off. That’s about as much as Mitt Romney spent in the Florida Republican primary.

The U.S. presidential election of 2012 is predicted to cost the campaigns $3-4 billion, several hundred times more than the French campaign. And the French government reimburses about half of all campaign costs.

The voting is nationwide, not filtered through some intermediary devise such as the Electoral College that distorts the outcome and negates to meaninglessness nearly half the votes cast. The voting always takes place on a Sunday to maximize the turnout, whereas in the U.S. elections are intentionally held on a workday so as to minimize worker participation.

As a result, while the turnout in the most recent French presidential election in 2007 was considered low at 84%, the 70% who voted in the U.S. presidential election in 2008 was considered high. Ballots in France are on paper and counted by hand. As a result of these features of its electoral system and its significantly greater income equality, France’s is a far more democratic country than the U.S.

The French electorate is independent, traditionally polarized, and not centrist. The current most centrist candidate, Francois Bayrou, is running a distant fifth and fading into irrelevance. The most graphic recent example of French polarization was the 2005 vote on the constitution of the European Union which failed by a wide margin despite being strongly favored by all French political parties except the far left and far right.

Many, such as Karl Rove, think there is really no center in U.S. politics either, but this phenomenon is particularly evident in France and has been for centuries, during which time they have on several occasions killed each other mercilously.

The horse race

It is certain that no one will have a majority in the first round and the runoff will be between the incumbent president, Nicolas Sarkozy representing the UMP (Union pour un Mouvemente Populaire) and Francois Hollande representing the Socialist Party.

Third place is now up for grabs. Early in the race, the far right wing National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen, was solidly in third but trailing the top two candidates by more than 10%. She has since been overtaken by the charismatic and fast rising leftist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, representing Left Unity, a coalition to the left of the Socialists, including the Communist Party and other leftist groups.

Mélenchon has made the biggest move of any candidate in the race, moving from an initial 5% to 15% in the most recent polls, while Le Pen dropped from about 15% to 12%. Polls show Mélenchon rising fastest, with Sarkozy rising more slowly, Hollande and Le Pen dropping. Hollande is losing votes to Mélenchon. Le Pen is losing votes to Sarkozy.

Regardless of these trends, the polls have consistently shown for months that Hollande and Sarkozy will both easily make the runoff and Hollande will win that by a wide margin. Despite Sarkozy’s recent gains, every poll for months has shown him losing badly in the second round to Hollande, even if he is able to win the first round. No poll has shown Hollande’s lead at less than 6% in the runoff, outside the margin of error.

Sarkozy’s defeat will make him only the second French president to not be reelected since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958. The crucial polls show Sarkozy only getting a minority of the vote of the far-right National Front candidate, Le Pen, in the second round while Mélenchon’s voters overwhelmingly switch to Hollande.

Sarkozy is running to the right in an effort to enhance his standing among Le Pen voters for the second round. But polls continue to show that many Le Pen supporters are unwilling to switch to Sarkozy and many of her ex-leftist supporters (the French analogy to the blue-collar Reagan Democrat) will switch to Hollande.

The simple explanation of Sarkozy’s failure is that the majority of the French electorate does not like the man personally and disapproves of his policies. It is hard to say which is more important. His anti-immigrant measures, austerity advocacy, and militarism in Libya do not represent the political thinking of the majority of the French, where 43% of respondents to a recent poll agreed with the proposition that “capitalism is fundamentally flawed.”

Given that Sarkozy’s father was an immigrant, his anti-immigrant positions seem exemplary of a particularly repellant form of political opportunism.

But in image conscious France, his personality and stature may be his biggest liabilities. He’s hyperactive, aggressive, ostentatious, and short. Take away Sarkozy’s platform shoes and de Gaulle would have been nearly a foot taller.

Napoleon could get away with short, but not Sarkozy. He’s just not the distinguished presidential figure most French want to represent them to the world. Sarkozy is also widely thought to be corrupt, as was his mentor, ex-president Chirac, who now hates him too.

The recent shootings in Toulouse turned the campaign temporarily to the issue of security, considered a strong suit for Sarkozy, but it didn’t help his standing noticeably in subsequent polls. He has flailed fruitlessly trying to find an issue that would resurrect him as his approval ratings sank into the 20’s. Meanwhile French unemployment has crept up to 10% and economic growth has stalled despite Sarkozy’s promises of prosperity.

With only two weeks to go, Sarkozy’s approval ratings have climbed to 40%, but 58% disapprove of him and 57% approve of Hollande. Those numbers have been remarkably static and spell Sarkozy’s political doom.

Before the first round, expect Sarkozy to become ever more desperate in his attempts to attract Islamophobic support from the right. He has recently denied entry into France of Muslim clerics he labels as “extremists,” has ordered the arrest and deportation of several individuals accused of being Muslim terrorist sympathizers, and said that people who log on to jihadist websites should be arrested.

Sarkozy is running a campaign that ignores the center while trying to build and energize a right-wing base. That strategy only works in a low turnout setting, not with 80% or better participation.

What a Hollande victory means

What is the meaning of Francois Hollande being the next president of France? Many Americans will probably say “not much,” since they don’t consider France itself important. That view is ill-informed and often masks envy.

France is the world’s ninth largest economy, but along with Germany, it is the nucleus of the European Union, the world’s largest economy. France is also one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council with a veto and an independent nuclear power. It is and has been for centuries a political and cultural model for others. By having hosted four since the original in 1789, Paris is the cradle of democratic revolutions that have inspired millions around the globe.

Today France has arguably the most sophisticated social welfare system in the world. It is perpetually the world’s number one tourist destination despite the alleged grumpiness of its citizens. Its cuisine is a UNESCO World Heritage cultural phenomenon and it produces the world’s most sought after wines by a very wide margin. Its art is universally revered. It probably provides the world’s most commonly used advertising motif to symbolize chic and fashionable.

In essence, France matters a lot more than even its size and wealth might indicate. The last time a Socialist was newly-elected president of France, it was 1981 and Francois Mitterrand was coming into office in coalition with the Communists and with a long list of nationalizations and other aggressive socialist initiatives.

Francois Hollande will have relatively little of that. He’s running as a moderate and that is what the French leftist intelligencia consider him. However, were he running as a Democrat in the U.S., Labour Party in the UK, or Social Democrat in Germany, his platform would be considered quite leftist indeed.

It goes without saying that he promises very significant differences from Sarkozy. These include France’s position on the European debt crisis, its willingness to cooperate with U.S. militarism, and a range of French domestic issues, particularly in regards to the tax structure. The take-off point to determine what Francois Hollande offers comes from a campaign document containing his “60 pledges.”

These include:

1. The renegotiation of EU financial arrangements designed to confront the “debt crisis” by including more emphasis on growth relative to austerity.
2. Re-hiring 60,000 teachers.
3. Subsidizing 150,000 jobs for youth.
4. Increasing the number of public sector jobs.
5. Raising the current top marginal income tax rate from 41% to 45% and creating a new bracket that taxes income over a million euros a year at 75%.
6. Cutting the minimum age to receive a pension back from 62 years to 60 and a full pension from 67 back to 65.
7. Capping executive compensation.
8. Ending tax havens and cutting out 29 billion euros in tax breaks for the wealthy.
9. Instituting a financial transactions tax.
10. Taxing investment income at the same rate as wages and salaries.
11. Creating a public European credit-rating agency.
12. Forcing banks to separate their retail banking from their investment operations.
13. Using revenues from the new taxes on the rich to cut the budget deficit to 3% in 2013 and to balance the budget by the end of his first term.
14. Legalizing gay marriage and adoptions.
15. Achieving international recognition for the Palestinian state.
16. Cutting France’s current high use of nuclear energy by replacing it with sustainable nonpolluting energy.
17. Bringing home all French troops from Afghanistan early — by the end of 2012.
18. Cutting the salary of the French president by 30%.

For an American presidential candidate, this platform would be radical beyond our wildest dreams. Of course, much of it may be dismissed as campaign rhetoric and there is little doubt that eventually many on the left will be disappointed in Hollande. But much of his program could be accomplished without greater public sector expenditures and his new taxes on the wealthy are popular.

Much depends on whether the Socialist Party and its left allies are able to win enough seats in the National Assembly elections to be held in June in order to avoid divided government. Sarkozy’s UMP now holds 317 of the 577 seats. This gives Hollande two months after winning the presidency to exploit his momentum in order to help the Socialist Party in the National Assembly elections.

A clear Socialist Party majority is unlikely. Although recent regional elections have been trending left, the Socialists would need to win 85 additional seats to gain a majority. A left coalition majority, however, is more within reach. There are currently 25 members to the left of the Socialists in the National Assembly. That number would need to grow along with the Socialists.

Such a left coalition will be necessary in order for Hollande to be able to name a Socialist as prime minister and form a unified government with control of both the executive and legislature. That coalition would necessarily include parties to the left of the Socialists, the forces now being mobilized by the candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon of Left Unity. Having them as coalition partners pushes Hollande’s positions further to the left.

The most obvious and important change a Hollande presidency might bring would be in negotiations within the EU concerning its “debt crisis.” There is currently a consensus among the right-wing-led governments of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK that cuts in government spending and austerity measures imposed on social services are the sole acceptable means of government debt reduction. As a leftist, Hollande crashes that party with a different perspective that supports greater government expenditures, government sponsored growth and higher taxes on capital and the rich.

How that debate will evolve is the most important issue in Europe. Within the EU, will Hollande demand a new approach that gives greater emphasis to government sponsored growth or will he settle for rhetorical flourishes?

In foreign policy insofar as it relates to affairs outside Europe, Hollande is certain to take France in a new direction. With the disintegration of Libya into warring tribes, the decimation of women’s rights there in the wake of the Sarkozy-led invasion, and the great unpopularity of French involvement with NATO in Afghanistan, one can be confident that French cooperation with U.S./NATO military adventures will be much harder to achieve with Hollande.

This attitude has already been reflected in an adamant statement, given by the man said to be Hollande’s future Minister of Defense, that France pulling its 3,600 soldiers out of Afghanistan this year was non-negotiable. Hollande is also complaining about the French role in the NATO command structure and has floated a concept of “European defense” with reduced reliance on the US.

In addition, his support for Palestinian statehood is a reversal of French policy that will run head-on into U.S. opposition in the UN Security Council. Expect increasing French opposition to Israeli Likud government actions, given the widespread hostility toward Likud and Zionism among the staunchly secular and pro-Palestinian French left.

Domestically, Hollande will primarily be concerned with raising taxes on capital in order to continue funding some of the world’s best social services. Hollande has explicitly said that “my biggest enemy is finance capital” and “I don’t like the rich.”

His support for a cap on executive compensation, a financial transactions tax, taxing capital gains like wages and higher marginal tax brackets at the top signals a radically different approach to solving government debt issues from that advocated by Sarkozy and currently favored by Europe’s conservative leaders.

He will also put greater emphasis on the integration of immigrants into French society in contrast to Sarkozy’s penchant for instigating Islamophobia and Roma roundups. And Hollande’s promised enactment of gay marriage and adoption would be a huge victory for gay rights worldwide.

If Hollande is successful as France’s next president, he will be offering Europe and the rest of the world a social democratic model that will have great appeal. Such a model would stand in sharp contrast to that provided by the U.S.

Hence, the French presidential election may have more important global implications than the one in the U.S. in November, which will again offer two candidates in relatively closer agreement on basic policy issues than the candidates in France, a phenomenon to be expected given the heavy corporate influence on both major U.S. political parties.

Type rest of the post here

Source /

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tdreyer@austin.rr.com

A VETERAN, A SMILE AND AN IMAGE

March 30 marked the official start of the Mexican presidential campaign. Prior to that date candidates were officially prohibited from campaigning. The campaign lasts for 90 days, followed a one-round election on July 1. The candidate with the most votes, even if they are less than a majority, wins.

The current front-runner, with 51 percent of the voters who declared a preference, is Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic, 45-year-old candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). After graduating from law school he went into politics, following the footsteps of generations of his forbears in his native State of Mexico. During the 1990s he held various positions in state government and later served in the state legislature. This, as well as his family connections, propelled him into the governorship of the state for the 2005-2011 term.

Peña Nieto, who is married to TV star Angélica Rivera, is widely viewed as all image and no content. As columnist Jorge Zepeda Patterson observed, ”People will vote for him because he’s good looking, because he looks presidential. Period. He and his wife form a fairy-tale couple portrayed favorably by the two major TV networks, both of which favor him.”

Peña Nieto stresses that his positive record as governor of the State of Mexico—Mexico’s most populous state—qualifies him to be president. Such a view if far from unanimous. Veteran human rights activist Sergio Aguayo commented that Peña Nieto’s record “oscillated between mediocrity and catastrophe.” In any case, Peña Nieto’s hand picked-successor won the gubernatorial race handily in 2011, bolstering the image of his governorship.

Peña Nieto emphasizes that it’s time to oust the incumbent National Action Party (PAN), since during the 12 years its two presidents have been in office both violence and the number of poor people have increased. He also stresses that as a result of what he calls a “dysfunctional state”, economic growth during the last decade has been slower than it has been during any other decade since the Depression.

Observers have attached the term Teflon candidate to Peña Nieto, since so far none of his gaffes have significantly lowered his approval rating. The most conspicuous of these gaffes was his not being able to—at a book fair yet! —state which three books have most influenced him. His strategy is to avoid unscripted encounters and to refrain from making bold proposals which might cost him some of his heterogeneous base.

Peña Nieto received the nomination of his party by default, after it became obvious that he was far more popular than any other potential candidate. The PRI, which emerged from among the victorious generals of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917, is both Peña Nieto’s greatest asset and his greatest liability. Many feel that if the PRI regains the presidency, there will be a return to the authoritarianism that characterized the party’s 71-year-long hold on the Mexican presidency. A more optimistic view portrays a new PRI constrained by a congress chosen by real elections and by a supreme court which actually rules against the executive branch.

Even though many are wary of a PRi return to Los Pinos, the presidential residence, the party offers by far the best get-out-the-vote machine in Mexico—the result of decades of political control and the many governorships currently held by PRI members. Such a machine could prove to be crucial in an election where grass-roots enthusiasm has been in short supply.

Trailing Peña Nieto has been PAN candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota, with 28 percent of those declaring a candidate preference. She received an economics degree and subsequently served as a business consultant and public speaker. She transitioned to politics after she caught the attention of the wife of the PAN governor of the state of Guanajuato, who introduced her to the governor. This resulted in her being nominated to a seat in Congress. She soon resigned her congressional seat to serve as President Fox’s secretary of welfare, a powerful post in the federal government. In 2006 she resigned her cabinet post to manage Felipe Calderón’s foundering presidential campaign. After Calderón won his hotly disputed election, he appointed her as secretary of education. She had limited impact while serving in that post because she failed to wrest power from the powerful head of the teacher’s union. In 2009 she returned to the Chamber of Deputes where she became coordinator of the PAN delegation.

Her sights soon turned to the upcoming 2012 presidential race. The PAN alone among the parties staged a primary election to select its presidential candidate this year. Vázquez Mota won 54 percent of the 515,000 votes cast by registered PAN members and supporters, making her the first Mexican woman to be nominated for the presidency by a major party. The two males she defeated quickly united behind her candidacy.

Vázquez Mota is playing on her womanhood, announcing, “We are going to demonstrate that Mexico is ready for its first woman president.” She also noted in her victory speech after winning the primary that her experience raising a family would serve her as president.

She raises the specter of another PRI administration ushering back the authoritarianism and corruption associated with past PRI administrations. She is less clear on what she is for, other than improving education and creating 16 million scholarships so poor children can afford to remain in school longer. She has proposed a coalition of parties to overcome the lack of decisive government action which has plagued both PAN administrations. Finally, although culture wars are much less significant than in the United States, she has stated her opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

Given widespread rejection of the violence associated with incumbent PAN President Felipe Calderon’s crime-fighting policy and dissatisfaction with slow economic growth, Vázquez Mota’s greatest challenge is to establish her independence from the policies of the incumbent PAN president. At some point she must offer an alternative to what political scientist Silvia Gómez Tagle characterized as “more of the current policies of Felipe Calderón, which haven’t worked.”

The PAN candidate also needs to overcome the perception that she smiles and talks a lot but is weak on content. Her speeches have been compared to those of motivational speakers—full of optimism and positive attitude, but lacking specifics. Columnist Sergio Sarmiento made this biting comment, “She prefers to fill the spaces with words rather than with ideas.”

Her party, the PAN, was organized in the 1930s as a conservative response to government anticlericalism, President Lázaro Cárdenas’ (1934-1940) reforms, and the lack of democracy. In the last quarter of the 20th century the party saw a massive influx of businessmen, including future president Vicente Fox, who felt the PRI was wrecking the economy. Since the PAN assumed power at the federal level in 2000, the party has suffered from its failure to achieve promised rates of economic growth and from violence associated with Calderón’s anti-crime campaign. It has become increasingly hard to determine how the PAN is different from the PRI, which it replaced. Indeed Manuel Clouthier, son of an iconic PAN presidential candidate with the same name, left the party in 2012, declaring the PAN had “sunk to practices exactly like those which the PAN fought before taking power… It has been totally corrupted by power.”

The third major candidate is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, widely referred to simply as AMLO. He was the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 2006 and was declared to have lost the 2006 election by less than a percentage point after having maintained a commanding lead during most of the campaign. Rather than leading the pack this year, only 20% of those polled expressed a preference for him, in large part due to his having alienated much of his base due to his refusal to recognize his election loss and his leading major protest demonstrations which tied up Mexico City for months.

AMLO first drew national attention protesting stolen elections in his home state of Tabasco and the national oil company’s running roughshod over those whose land and fishing grounds had been ruined by oil operations.

AMLO then moved to the national scene, heading the PRD and serving as mayor of Mexico City. His popularity as mayor positioned him for his 2006 presidential campaign, which was derailed by a massive wave of illegally funded attack ads.

For his 2012 campaign AMLO has attempted to moderate his image, declaring on the opening day of his campaign that “honesty, justice and love—lots of love”, would characterize his administration. Rather than referring to Mexico’s businessmen as a “mafia,” as he did in the past, he now courts them and refers to them as the motor of the economy. Many question the sincerity of his shift in style between 2006 (and before) when he was much more confrontational. In fact the press often refers to the new López Obrador as AMLOve. Crucial to Lopez Obrador’s pulling out ot third place will be convincing the Mexican public he is not a Romney-like flip-flopper who is tailoring discourse to what he believes the Mexican people want to hear.

The three keys to AMLO’s economic plans are lowering energy costs, combating monopolies, and lowering costs of government. Lowering the costs of electricity and gasoline would, although he doesn’t not acknowledge it, increase the already massive subsidy the government provides the middle and upper classes who consume a disproportionate share of energy. His goal of fighting monopolies is more straightforward, but risky in a campaign. Targeting monopolies would involve the taking on the two media giants controlling television—the very medium which will filter the information the vast majority of Mexicans rely on to make their candidate selection.

While promising not to increase debt, inflation or taxes, AMLO advocates stimulating the economy to create 1.2 million jobs a year. Rather, he promises to finance economic stimulus by ending monopolies, lowering salaries of overpaid government functionaries, and eliminating corruption. Reversing decades of neoliberal policy, he urges a major role for government in implementing an industrial policy and creating public works. AMLO defends the icon of Mexican nationalism, the national oil company Pemex. In an AMLO administration no private capital will taint it. In addition, he proposes to end oil exports and refine Mexican oil locally in five new refineries.

AMLO shows his left roots in formulating security policy. Instead of advocating more guns and jails, he proposes ending drug-related violence by providing jobs and educational opportunities for young people so that they will not be tempted by employment offered by criminal gangs. More immediately he advocates creating a new federal police force which within six months would replace the military in combating organized crime.

If he is to move up during a short three-month campaign, AMLO must make some bold moves. As of now his economic plans smack of the revolutionary nationalism of 1960s and 1970s. Such policies indeed produced high growth then, but are of questionable relevance in today’s world. Similarly there is sound logic behind his statements on drug-related violence. However it would take years for his economic policy, even if successful, to offer well paid jobs to the millions flooding the labor market, the result of record high births in the 1990s. So far AMLO (and the other candidates) have failed to embrace the notion of drug legalization which is building momentum throughout Latin America.

AMLO received the 2012 nomination of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) after he edged out the mayor of Mexico City in a voter preference poll. Both presidential aspirants had previously agreed that the winner of the poll would be the left’s presidential candidate. AMLO is not only the candidate of the PRD but of two other small left parties. This is an important advantage in a multiple-candidate one-round election. In 2006, the candidate of a small left party drew more votes than the difference between AMLO’s vote total and that of Felipe Calderón, the declared winner. In addition AMLO has the support of a nationwide grass-roots organization known as MORENA, which he has built up by traveling to all of Mexico’s 2000-plus municipios during the last six years.

While AMLO has the unified left behind him, his being the nominee of the PRD may well prove to be problematic. Coming up with policy suggestions has been difficult for the PRD—a dilemma shared by the left throughout post-Cold War Latin America. Another challenge faced by the PRD is that the party has been so riven by factions that power struggles within the party often overshadow its policy proposals. Media coverage of the party frequently portrays the factions as “tribes.” Repeatedly the “tribes” have been so intent on gaining control of the PRD that they have attempted to rig elections for party posts. Such shenanigans hardly make the general public feel comfortable with the notion of the party administering Mexico.

The great unknown is what impact the internet and social media will have on the elections. Before March 30 all the candidates were making use of social media to get out their message since it did not fall under the government ban on campaigning before that date. During the first week of the official campaign social media served to highlight a series of minor campaign snafus by the Vázquez Mota campaign—messages that appeared to be managed by the well oiled PRI-media machine. Social media could shape opinion, get out the vote, or simply get lost in the millions of TV spots Mexicans will be bombarded with before July 1.

As columnist Juan Enríquez Cabot observed, so far a lack of enthusiasm and hope have characterized the campaign. Moderation, not confrontation, is the dominant theme. Disappointment with the results of the transition to democracy in 2000 pervades the electorate. Compounding this is the notion, shared by many U.S. Republicans during the primary season, that the choices on the ballot are less than sterling.

Observers have also commented on the similarity of the candidates’ proposals. Zepeda Patterson declared the security proposals of the three candidates “are vague, ill defined, and virtually interchangeable.” All have proposed higher economic growth and fighting corruption—standard campaign fare for decades.

To close on a positive note, Mexicans do not feel corporations are people. Rather than following the Citizens United line of “reasoning,” Mexico strictly prohibits corporations from funding candidates or buying airtime to influence the election. The amount private citizens can donate is sharply limited, allowing public financing to pay the bulk of campaign costs. TV campaign ads are broadcast without charge to either candidates or government. As a condition for getting a broadcast license, networks are required to provide a certain percent of airtime to the government. The government then allocates this airtime to campaigns so they can broadcast spots without being beholden to donors. In addition the government makes substantial cash transfers to the political parties so they can campaign effectively and get their message out.

Austin-Texas based writer Philip L. Russell has written six books on Latin America. His latest is The History of Mexico: from Pre-Conquest to Present (Routledge). Frequently updated information on the Mexican presidential campaign can be found in chapter 30 of www.mexicofrompreconquesttopresent.com.

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