Right in the middle of the whole brouhaha regarding immigration, the Mexican elections loom:
The candidate for Fox's PRI party is a loser - there are two frontrunners and one will be the next President: Andres Obrador and Felipe Calderon. The OC Register has a good summary of the two in their newspaper today.
I want Felipe Calderon to win. His politcal slogan is : Para que vivamos mejor (So we can live better). He wants to focus on building Mexico's ecomony to stem migration of its labor force. He wants Mexico to also be a world player and seek trade agreements with other countries. He has also voiced open support for Israel. He stated to the Washington post, "In order to create jobs and get growth, it's necessary to [have] . . . national and foreign investment." This is important - allowing private companies and foreign ownership of Mexican land would help their economy and better the lifestyle, thus encouraging a Mexican to stay in his hometown rather than seek to traverse the Arizona desert.
Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, on the other hand, has as his slogan: Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres (For the well-being of all, poor people first). Likened by his opponent to Hugo Chavez, Obrador is a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, portraying himself as the liberator of the poor - yet, he also wants to have free import of U.S. corn and beans, a move that would bankrupt Mexican farmers. That idea reminded me of life under Mussolini - the trains ran on time, people had a plate of pasta, and so no one noticed the denigration of human rights and democratic values around them, because they were fed and happy. Isolationsim, he says, is the key to Mexico's future.
Watch these elections, my friends - I daresay these will have as much an impact on the United States as our own upcoming elections in 2008 will have. The two men are very different and want to lead Mexico in different paths. It may get ugly - Obrador has already stated that law is relative and he would not uphold a law that he believes is unjust, and people close to him say that if he loses, he already has plans to lead his followers in riots.
Let's hope that GWB gets Calderon to deal with in the next few years. Otherwise, the question of immigration will get a lot more weighty.
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3 comments:
Just what Mexico need, more free trade. NAFTA has already killed a lot of the farms and small shops. Harvard educated should really speak to the people too. Lesser of two evils I'll consider, but this guy doesn't sound like a real treat.
What Mexico needs is a HELL of a lot less Gummint, and a decent Civil Service system.
Dad, You're partially correct. What Mexico needs is a gov't more representative of the people, not just the rich. Although, that seems rather like what's starting to occur here..
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