Monday, June 28, 2010

Pre-Election Jaw-Jaw

This weekend, Marcelo Ebrard said that the PRI shouldn't even dream of returning to the presidency. Peña Nieto fires back that not only will the PRI be back in Los Pinos in 2012, it's going to hold on to Oaxaca next Sunday. Hopefully, the two camps will scuffle at a press conference before too long.

Peña Nieto, incidentally, is on his way to China to inaugurate a Mexico State exhibit at the Shanghai Expo. This is another in a series of presidential-seeming activities by Peña Nieto in recent years, including trips to talk security in Israel and state of the state addresses overflowing with pageantry. Of course, campaigning on the national stage, not to mention running the country, is a very different ballgame, and there's no telling whether Peña Nieto will be good at either. Plus, his government made an utter hash of the investigation into one of the more infamous crimes in the nation's recent history. It as ever seems that the credits side of the Peña Nieto ledger is filled with rather empty items, while the debts are significant.

2 comments:

David Agren said...

Peña Nieto is paying a lot of attention to Oaxaca. Supposedly - and this comes from the Gabino Cué campaign - there's deal in place that Peña Nieto helps the PRI keep Oaxaca, where the candidate is considered a lackey of state Gov. Ulises Ruiz, and helps Ruiz become national PRI president. In turn, Oaxaca, a solid PRI bastion, backs Peña Nieto's presidential bid, the new governor becomes a diehard loyalist and the state's impressive political machine and social programs are used for his 2012 campaign. Of course, the PRI losing Oaxaca would be complete embarrassment - which also explains the diligent campaigning there.

pc said...

You know I'd read something along those lines a couple of weeks ago, although it wasn't quite spelled out like that. In any event, it looks like they're going to take unless there's a last-minute swing. Most of the polls I saw had it at 5-10 points.