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Chiapas Protesters Block Mexican Present's Vehicle for 2 Hours, Opposition Leaders Seeks External Probe of Mexic's Election

Mexico Daily News, August 27, 2021

 

Mexican opposition leaders, Cortes, Zambrano and Moreno, were in Washington to make their claim before international organizations, August 23, 2021	Protesters surround the Mexican President's vehicle in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, August 27, 2021

 

 

AMLO misses his press conference after being detained by protesters in Chiapas

Dissident teachers and others blocked his vehicle for more than two hours

Mexico Daily News, Friday, August 27, 2021

For the second time since he took office in December 2018, President López Obrador didn’t appear in person at his own morning news conference on Friday.

Members of the CNTE teachers union and other protesters blocked his vehicle for more than two hours, preventing him from entering a military base in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, where this morning’s conference was held.

Almost an hour into the presser, López Obrador appeared via a video call to address reporters from the SUV in which he was traveling.

“I’m pleased to be able to communicate with you in a somewhat special situation,” said the president, still wearing his seatbelt.

“… I was about to arrive … but at the entrance to the barracks a group of teachers from the Chiapas CNTE prevented our entry under the condition that we had to attend to them immediately and resolve their demands,” he said.

López Obrador addressed the press conference with a video call.

“I can’t allow this because the president of Mexico cannot be a hostage of anyone. I can’t yield to any vested interest group so I decided to stay here. I’m not going to enter by force,” López Obrador said, comparing his non-violent actions to those of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

“… If they don’t allow us to pass, I’ll stay here the time that is necessary,” he said. “… Due to the dignity invested in the president I can’t yield to the blackmail by anybody. I don’t establish relations of mafioso complicity with any vested interest group. So we’re offering dialogue … [with the] education minister, to whom this issue corresponds.”

The president described the teachers’ protest as legal but improper and called on them to consider whether he really deserved to be subjected to it. He noted that he has met with members of the dissident teachers’ union as many as 10 times and canceled the previous government’s “badly named education reform.”

Protesting teachers demanded to speak to the president about employment issues including remuneration, working conditions and recruitment. The disgruntled educators also rejected the government’s claim that the much protested 2013 education reform has been fully repealed.

Students, healthcare workers and family members of victims of crime were also among the approximately 200 protesters that blocked the president’s vehicle.

“We’re mothers of victims of femicide. We want our cases to be resolved,” Adriana Gómez Martínez told the newspaper Reforma.

“I believe he’s doing the wrong thing [by staying in his car] because he should attend to us, he should know our requests, that’s why we’re here,” she said.

After the protesters dispersed, López Obrador finally made it into the military compound at about 8:15 a.m., more than two hours after the 6:00 a.m. starting time for a security meeting he planned to attend and more than an hour after the commencement of his 7:00 a.m. press conference.

Once inside he met with members of his security cabinet and Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón, who initiated the president’s presser in his absence.

AMLO misses his press conference after being detained by protesters (mexiconewsdaily.com)

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Opposition coalition seeks external probe of Mexico’s ‘narco-election’

They claim that organized crime intervened to an unprecedented level in June 6 elections

Mexico Daily News, Monday, August 23, 2021

The leaders of three opposition parties were in Washington D.C. on Monday to submit a complaint to two international organizations that the June 6 elections were unduly influenced by organized crime.

Marko Cortés of the National Action Party (PAN), Alejandro Moreno of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Jesús Zambrano of the Democratic Revolution Party presented their complaint to the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an autonomous organ of the OAS.

The three parties contested the June 6 elections – which came at the conclusion of the most violent electoral season on record – as part of an alliance known as Va por México (Go for Mexico).

The ruling Morena party was easily the most successful party in the outcome, although it lost its supermajority in the lower house of federal Congress.

The newspaper El Universal, which has seen the 57-page complaint, said the PAN, PRI and PRD leaders planned to ask the OAS to send a committee of observers to Mexico to investigate their claim that organized crime intervened in the elections to an unprecedented level. The three men subsequently took the same complaint to the IACHR.

Criminal groups “supported, installed, censured and murdered candidates in the majority of the country’s states” during the lead-up to the elections, the complaint says.

Cortés, Moreno and Zambrano met with OAS general secretary Luis Almagro and were due to meet with IACHR executive secretary Tania Reneaum later on Monday to discuss their claims.

Cortés described the meeting with Almagro as “very good,” while Zambrano said the OAS chief is “very worried about what is happening in our country” and committed to closely study the complaint submitted to him.

“… We will not allow Mexican democracy to be placed at risk,” Moreno said on Twitter above a photo of the three party leaders with Almagro.

The PAN, PRI and PRD assert that principles contained in the Inter-American Democratic Charter were blatantly violated during the process leading up to the elections, and people’s right to democracy was impinged upon as a result. The charter states that governments have an obligation to do all they can to defend democracy.

Their complaint, El Universal said, details a range of electorally-motivated crimes including homicides, kidnappings and intimidation of both candidates and everyday citizens.

A campaign vehicle in Michoacán that was attacked a month before the June elections.

It refers in depth to criminal interference in elections in seven states where it was especially bad or there were particularly high-profile cases of political violence: Sinaloa, México state, Guerrero, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Veracruz and San Luis Potosí.

The complaint also mentions the appearance of a decapitated human head at a polling station in Tijuana on the morning of June 6.

“The image of this severed head with open eyes was the perfect metaphor for the interference of organized crime, not just on the day of the elections at which 20,500 federal, state and municipal positions were up for grabs, but also during the months that preceded them and the days that have followed,” it says.

“For months, the warnings of threats, kidnappings and murders suffered by the candidates to these positions carried the warning that violence and criminal coercion were going to be present like never before in these elections, the largest ever of the young Mexican democracy.”

The complaint also states that “armed groups kidnapped and immobilized complete campaign teams, seized polling stations and forced citizens to emit their votes publicly and on their orders.”

“… Thousands of citizens who were victims of this violence were forced to keep quiet. Lawyers preferred to abstain from processing electoral coercion complaints …” it says.

The complaint says there were a total of 693 victims of electorally-motivated violence during the 2020-21 electoral period, an increase of 68% compared to the 2017-18 period.

Noting Morena’s strong performance at the election in Pacific coast states, opposition parties and some media commentators previously suggested that the ruling party had struck a deal with organized crime groups to win power there.

Speaking at his regular news conference on Monday, President López Obrador said he was completely unconcerned about the opposition parties’ decision to file a complaint with the OAS and the IACHR in the United States capital.

“… They’re very desperate,” he said before adding that they have the right to present their accusations.

“It’s legitimate for them to criticize us, to make accusations at international organizations as long as they act peacefully, … it’s for the good of the country, that’s the way democracy is everywhere.”

With reports from El Universal 

Opposition coalition seeks external probe of Mexico's 'narco-election' (mexiconewsdaily.com) 

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