By RICARDO CASTILLO

Yes for Mexico Alliance May Be a No-Go

After last week’s announcement that a new political front to combat Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party majority in Congress by business representative and Sí por Mexico (Yes for Mexico) movement conceivers Claudio X. González and Gustavo de Hoyos with the country’s three largest opposition parties, the potential alliance began to breakdown.

The three parties involved in the alliance with González and De Hoyos are the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), the second, third and fourth political forces in the country, behind Morena.

A rift seems to have developed within the PAN, as stated in a tweet last week by former PAN President and now-Senator Damián Zepeda.

“How sad it is to see the PAN in an electoral alliance with the PRI,” Zepeda wrote.

In a separate tweet, Zepeda added that PAN leader

was “incongruous” in accepting the alliance, particularly with the PRI, not so much with X. Gonzalez and De Hoyos, “because for decades we have fought to change Mexico and today the party is embracing what it criticized yesterday.”

“I disagree and this positioning does not represent me,” Zepeda said flatly.

Various factions within the PAN are rebelling against the alliance, which was made unilaterally by now-PAN President Marko Cortés, and he now has yet another potential rebellion on his hands.

Back in 2012, Mexican President Felipe Calderón severed his ties with PAN leaders, and that could just happen again.

AMLO has called the unlikely bedfellows’ coalition of the PAN and the PRI “the PRIAN, since they are the same.”

However, from 1939, when it was founded, until 2000, the PAN was the PRI’s leading contender.

At the PRI and PRD, leaders Alejandro Moreno and Jesús Zambrano, respectively, seem to just love the idea of the Yes for Mexico alliance.

All signs are that, given resistance from within, Cortés may soon make an announcement declining the X. González-De Hoyos invitation.

Tabasco Flooding

Flooding in Tabasco is not uncommon during the Caribbean hurricane season.

But this year tropical storm Eta overflowed a chain of electricity-producing dams along the state of Chiapas.

Therefore, last week, López Obrador confessed on Monday, Nov. 16, that Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) engineers, as well as members of the National Water Commission (Conagua) had to make a difficult decision on which gate on the Peñitas Dam to open up to release a torrent of water and prevent the dam from busting.

“If we didn’t close that dam gate named Macayos, then Villahermosa would have flooded completely,” AMLO said about the Tabasco state capital city.

Back in 2007, the city flooded, causing death and anguish for hundreds of thousands of resident, and Villahermosa (whose name translates to “beautiful village”) was definitely not a beautiful village.

But as a result of the decision to divert the water away from Villahermosa, large swathes of rural land, populated mostly by poor indigenous communities, were flooded, and between the two states, nearly 180,000 people were left homeless.

On Monday, AMLO announced a shift in purpose for the dams, saying that now a “hydrological canal” will be construction, putting the protection above electricity generation.

“We’re confronting structural problems here,” he said.

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, the president met with the governors of Chiapas and Tabasco, Rutilio Escandón and Adán Augusto López Hernández, respectively, as well as with Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) Director Manuel Bartlett, to discuss a permanent solution to this age-old problem.

The bad news is that the downpour stemming from Caribbean and Central American storms will keep overflowing the many Chiapas and Tabasco rivers.

Zebadúa Seeks Protected Witness Status

Emilio Zebadúa González, senior officer for now imprisoned former Secretary Rosario Rosario Roles at the Secretariat of Social Development (Sedesol)and Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development Secretariat (Sedatu) during the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, offered to become a “protected witness” in exchange for denouncing huge money laundering swindles.

Zebadúa has described to the Fiscal General of the Republic money deviation carried out both by Robles and then-Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray in a series of transfers now popularly known in the Mexican press as the Master Fraud.

Zebadúa has accused Peña Nieto of using the program called the National Crusade against Hunger to buy votes and to enhance the image of his administration.

Zebadúa is now charged with masterminding the Master Fraud, but he has claimed he was only following direction from Robles and Videgaray.

Buen Fin Sales

The strategic commercial thinktank Competitive Intelligence Unit (CIU) said Tuesday, Nov. 17, that sales during the Mexican Black Friday – known as El Buen Fin or the Good Weekend – marks a clear divide between past and future for Mexican shoppers, since electronic purchases represented 33 percent of all sales during the sale, 9 percent more than last year.

This year’s Buen Fin has been beleaguered by the challenges imposed by the pandemic, but still, it has helped to spur the economy in times of zero growth.

…Nov. 18, 2020