By Alfredo Peppard
On the fourth of July the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution -- the PRI -- lost their first ever election in the State of Oaxaca. Eighty-one years of one-party rule came to an end when a candidate for governor, Gabino Cué, won despite the PRI’s usual display of dirty tricks, including two murders and a kidnapping. Eviel, the PRI candidate, was carrying a heavy handicap in the person of the sitting governor, Ulises Ruiz. Ruiz is hated by the people of the state for his stealing of the election in 2006 and for the violent suppression of the 2006 uprising which culminated in the massacre in Zocalo, where 21 people died. The Supreme Court of Mexico recently found Ruis culpable in these deaths and huge banners were strung up in the Zocalo to remind people of that fact.
Gabino Cué of the Convergence Party was the candidate of a coalition that covered a wide range of the Mexican political spectrum. On the left was the PRD, the Party of Democratic Revolution that has been responsible for much progressive legislation in Mexico City and the Federal District. On the right of the coalition was the PAN, the Party of National Action, whose leader Felipe Calderon is president of Mexico.
Weeks prior to the election the Teacher’s Union occupied the Zocalo and surrounding streets with a tarp city where they slept on the pavement vowing to fight any election fraud on the part of the PRI. Unlike free and democratic America, no police riot squads attacked them to preserve the sanctity of free automobile passage.
For weeks the PRI treated the city to elaborate political theater: Airplanes towing banners and haranguing the people below with loudspeakers, attractive young women waving to people on the streets from the back of flatbed sound trucks, more attractive young women at major intersections waving party banners and employing sound systems worthy of Rock ‘n’ Roll concerts -- all failed to convince a majority of the voters that Ruis’ handpicked successor Eviel was the heralding of a new PRI.
With the PAN in the Peace and Progress Coalition. the national government cannot rule in favor of PRI fraud as in the past, and with a serious threat of revolt by unions and farmers organizations if the PRI tried to steal another election, the PRI was forced to back down on some of their more heavy-handed methods. (Not that they didn’t try. The head of the State Electoral Institute, José Luis Echeverría, was caught in a phone tap ordering 70,000 extra ballots for PRI use.) Not only did Gabino Cue’s coalition win the governor’s office, it won the Municipal Presidencies in the larger cities of the state as well Oaxaca has been having a party ever since.
What this election will mean in terms of the burning social issues that face the State of Oaxaca remains to be seen. The wide ideological spread of the coalition poses an interesting question. Although the PRD represented the majority of Cabino Cué’s votes, the ultra conservative position of the PAN may well serve as a counterweight.
The PRI represented the moneyed elite of the state. As a party they originated as an alliance of generals who emerged victorious from the revolution and civil war of 1910-20. Their role in Oaxaca as in most of Mexico was to end the revolution, restoring property forms as they were before the uprising. They did this with the use of pistoleros and police for 81 years and were strongly supported by the great land owners, mine operators and bankers.
Whether the rule of this elite is over, only time will tell
Showing posts with label fair elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fair elections. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Will Wal-Mart be our next President?
By Will Parry
Will the United States Supreme Court now rule that Wal-Mart can run for President?
That was the sardonic question posed by Greg Palast, writing in the February 15 Progressive Populist, after the court’s five right-wing justices declared that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as us human beings.
Palast was making a point through exaggeration, in the fine old tradition of Mark Twain. What is not at all far-fetched is a future in which the Wal-Marts of the corporate world elect their stooge as president, and stack the Congress and the state legislatures while they’re at it.
That’s the threat posed by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case.
President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
The corporation, writes Patricia J. Williams in the February 15 issue of The Nation, “will now enjoy a range of First Amendment benefits…constrained only by the size of its treasury in deploying whatever technological bullhorn has the greatest chance of drowning out everyone else.”
Or as The New York Times declared in a January 22 editorial: “If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.”
Lawrence M. Noble, former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, makes the same point about corporate blackmail: “We have got a million we can spend on advertising for you or against you – whichever one you want.”
In his scathing 90-page dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “while American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of money in politics.”
“Corporate interests already had too much money power over our political system,” writes Jim Hightower, the well-known Texas populist. “Using their PACs, executive bundling, 527s, front groups and other financing gimmicks, their chosen candidates have long had big advantage over lesser-funded aspirants.”
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader pointed out that “the financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists, winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial crisis.”
Now the lid on corporate spending, never screwed on too securely, is blown sky-high.
Plainly, progressives cannot hold still for what Jim Hightower calls “a black-robed coup” by Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
New York Senator Charles E. Schuman and Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, have been working on legislation in anticipation of the court’s ruling. One possibility would be a bill to ban political advertising by corporations that hire lobbyists, receive government money, or collect most of their revenue abroad.
Advocates are also stepping up the demand for public financing of elections, encouraged by the filing of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide congressional candidates with an alternative to corporate-funded campaigns.
Sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and Representative John Larson of Connecticut, both Democrats, the bill would encourage unlimited small-dollar donations from individuals. It would also provide qualifying candidates with public funding in exchange for refusing corporate or large private contributions. The bill has broad support, including 126 House co-sponsors.
Conceding that it will require a long-term campaign, Public Citizen is calling for a constitutional amendment, stating that for-profit corporations are not entitled to First Amendment protections except for freedom of the press.
Will the United States Supreme Court now rule that Wal-Mart can run for President?
That was the sardonic question posed by Greg Palast, writing in the February 15 Progressive Populist, after the court’s five right-wing justices declared that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as us human beings.
Palast was making a point through exaggeration, in the fine old tradition of Mark Twain. What is not at all far-fetched is a future in which the Wal-Marts of the corporate world elect their stooge as president, and stack the Congress and the state legislatures while they’re at it.
That’s the threat posed by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case.
President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
The corporation, writes Patricia J. Williams in the February 15 issue of The Nation, “will now enjoy a range of First Amendment benefits…constrained only by the size of its treasury in deploying whatever technological bullhorn has the greatest chance of drowning out everyone else.”
Or as The New York Times declared in a January 22 editorial: “If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.”
Lawrence M. Noble, former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, makes the same point about corporate blackmail: “We have got a million we can spend on advertising for you or against you – whichever one you want.”
In his scathing 90-page dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “while American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of money in politics.”
“Corporate interests already had too much money power over our political system,” writes Jim Hightower, the well-known Texas populist. “Using their PACs, executive bundling, 527s, front groups and other financing gimmicks, their chosen candidates have long had big advantage over lesser-funded aspirants.”
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader pointed out that “the financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists, winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial crisis.”
Now the lid on corporate spending, never screwed on too securely, is blown sky-high.
Plainly, progressives cannot hold still for what Jim Hightower calls “a black-robed coup” by Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
New York Senator Charles E. Schuman and Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, have been working on legislation in anticipation of the court’s ruling. One possibility would be a bill to ban political advertising by corporations that hire lobbyists, receive government money, or collect most of their revenue abroad.
Advocates are also stepping up the demand for public financing of elections, encouraged by the filing of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide congressional candidates with an alternative to corporate-funded campaigns.
Sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and Representative John Larson of Connecticut, both Democrats, the bill would encourage unlimited small-dollar donations from individuals. It would also provide qualifying candidates with public funding in exchange for refusing corporate or large private contributions. The bill has broad support, including 126 House co-sponsors.
Conceding that it will require a long-term campaign, Public Citizen is calling for a constitutional amendment, stating that for-profit corporations are not entitled to First Amendment protections except for freedom of the press.
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