[EM] ZERO! Clean Hands

[Dave Ketchum]

Looking at parties A and B:
      A wins presidential election - B swears they stole it!
      B wins governor's election - A swears they stole it the same way!
      "The waters of public opinion thus move in a veritable whirlpool of 
discontent."

What follows states the above in more detail - may the US learn to do better.
DWK

[narconews] Giordano: Fraud and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in Chiapas
August 21, 2006
Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleague,

The credibility of Mexico's electoral authorities gets its second big
test of the year as the results of the Chiapas governor's race are
counted. Al Giordano reports from Chiapas that while popular outrage
is focused on the apparent theft of presidential candidate Andrés
Manuel López Obrador's victory, López Obrador's Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) is widely accused of having engaged in
Chiapas in the same dirty tricks used against it at the national
level. In this state where hundreds of thousands live in rebel
communities defended by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation,
writes Giordano, the state election results "show the slippery slide
of Mexico's main political parties away from any shred of principle
or ideology, mere vehicles for factional disputes over the power and
money that comes with political office."

Giordano continues:

"There are no electoral heroes here in Chiapas. The PRD Candidate,
Juan Sabines, was, until switching parties, the mayor of the state
capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez, son of a former PRI governor, nephew of the
late 'Poet of the State' Jaime Sabines, and in addition to the
backing of Governor Salazar (formerly of the PRI, then the PAN, now
PRD), he also counts with the political machine of right-wing former
PRI governor Roberto Albores Guillen, who is expected to be Sabines'
right-hand in the government if he obtains it. And Sabines' slight
lead is tainted by the brute force used by the state government now
in power to buy votes - with taxpayer dollars, preying upon the pain
and poverty of the public - and use of the same electoral fraud
tactics used by Fox and his National Action Party (PAN in its Spanish
initials) nationwide in the July 2 presidential elections."

"...The confusion invites national dyslexia. The same 'center-left'
party that is victim of a gargantuan fraud nationwide is now accused
of authoring one in Chiapas. The political right (the PAN), and the
institutional right (the PRI) oppose the civil resistance against the
presidential race fraud but now may turn to such tactics in Chiapas:
sit-ins, blockades, and chants for a recount 'vote by vote, precinct
by precinct.' Up in Mexico City, each side pushes in one direction.
Down in Chiapas, those same forces push in opposite directions. The
waters of public opinion thus move in a veritable whirlpool of
discontent. Each of the major parties loses credibility in the
process. Those, like the Zapatistas, who have firmly maintained that
the electoral system is illegitimate, will receive the credibility
that those above mishandle. There is not a novelist on earth that
could invent a scenario as tumultuous as the real history unfolding
out of Chiapas today."

Read the full story in The Narco News Bulletin:

http://www.narconews.com

Also, right next door, the people of the neighboring state of Oaxaca
continue their revolutionary, public schoolteacher-led struggle to do
away with the corrupt party system that continues to lose credibility
by the second. Narco News' daily coverage of the developments in
Oaxaca can be found here:

http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo/oaxaca/en.html

  From somewhere in a country called América,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
dan at narconews.com

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-- 
davek at clarityconnect.com people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
        Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
              If you want peace, work for justice.