By RICARDO CASTILLO

The INE Registration Rush Is On

The registration of new organizations that want to become Mexican political parties that claim to have complied with all stipulations made by the National Electoral Institute (INE) began over the weekend.

The first to file the request was came last Friday, Feb. 21, the Solidarity Encounter Party (PES), on Friday, Feb. 21.

The PES legal representative is Alejandrina Moreno.

The PES is the new face for the former Social Encounter Party, which, although it has a representation in both houses of Congress, lost its registration during the 2018 general election for not achieving the minimum 3 percent of the vote required to preserve its registration.

The PES has the full backing of Protestant churches and plans to back Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) Fourth Transformation programs.

However, Moreno said, “we’re not a satellite” of the majority National Regeneration Party (Morena.)

The PES representative said that the party  already has 412,918 affiliated militant members, although the needed figure is just 233,845.

The second organization registration announcement came on Saturday, Feb.22, from José Fernando González Sánchez of the Progressive Social Networks (RSP), a movement backed by former National Educations Workers Union leader Elba Esther Gordillo.

González Sánchez, the son-in-law of Gordillo, allegedly leads in the constituting national assembly with – he said in a press release — over 800 national delegates.

The third organization to announce its intent to register was the México Libre (Free Mexico), led by former President Felipe Calderón and his wife and former National Action Party (PAN) presidential hopeful, Margarita Zavala, which held a “national assembly” on Sunday, Feb. 23, to announce the move. Calderón said that México Libre has 279,961 affiliated members.

All new organizations must present proof that they held a minimum of 200 assemblies, along with a declaration of principles and plan of action and statutes program.

AMLO-WSJ Rift

For the second time in less than a week, the New York-based daily Wall Street Journal wrote what AMLO said he considers “an attack.”

This time a report by the newspaper said that Mexico is “a one-man country,” much as it was during the dictatorships of Antonio López de Santa Anna and Porfirio Díaz.

“What have I got to do with Santa Anna?” AMLO asked rhetorically.

“What do I have to do with Díaz, who ruled 34 years? I’ve been president for 15 months and still have four more years to go. The newspaper over-spoke in its comparison because the writers don’t know our nation’s history.”

In some political circles, it is being said that behind the media “attacks” is none other than former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who AMLO blames for the nation’s disasters since it is a well-known fact that Salinas is an investor in the WSJ.

Flag Covers Women Too

During Mexico’s Flag Day celebrations commemorated at the Campo Marte Polo Grounds in Mexico City, Supreme Court and Chamber of Deputies Presidents Arturo Zaldivar and Laura Angélica Rojas Martínez, respectively, said that the flag also needs to be flown for the feminist cause and to prevent Mexican women from living in fear.

Both officials were keynoters at the military honors to the flag ceremony led by AMLO.

Rojas said: “Today, we, the daughters of this Mexico, need for our flag to shelter us, to embrace us and protect us. For the construction of a truly equalitarian society needs to be everyone’s cause as we all struggle in authentic unity. The life of women and our girls is an urgent cause and a reason to raise the flag to fly throughout the land.”

Zaldivar’s message also referred to women’s equality as “it continues to not be a reality for them.”

He said that Mexico must create “a world in which women are free and safe, a world in which they don’t have to live in fear and can choose the life they want to live.”

Inflation Remains Stable

Mexico has racked up eight months in a row within the 3 percent plus range objective set by the country’s central bank Banco de México (Banxico).

The latest Banxico report, for the first two weeks of February, stated that inter-annual inflation was was at just 3.52 percent.

Sports: NAIM Sports Park

The allegedly unsolid grounds of the now-defunct project of the “sinking in silt” New International Mexico Airport (NAIM) at the old Texcoco dry lake basin will be used to develop both a sports park and an environmental reserve.

The sports complex will incorporate a variety of sports facilities, including a cycling oval.

Transportation and Communications Undersecretary Carlos Morán Moguel said that the project — proposed by the National Water Commission (Conagua), but only as an environmental park -– “is a go, but there will also be sports facilities.”

The full plan, Morán Moguel said, will be announced shortly “and it will also be a go.”