By RICARDO CASTILLO Independent presidential candidate Margarita Zavala finally gave up on her aspirations of becoming the first woman president of Mexico. Last Wednesday, May 16, she made the announcement during a TV talkshow where she was featured as the only interviewee. Her resignation caught nearly everyone off guard as the National Electoral Institute (INE) made it plain and clear
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A major theme among candidates in the ongoing Mexican presidential electoral campaign is the huge political squabble over education. And it seems only natural that education be the top topic of discussion since today Mexico celebrates the 100th anniversary of the declaration of Teachers’ Day or “Día del Maestro.” It was conceived during the drafting of the historic 1917
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS He’s young, intelligent, forward-thinking, good-looking, charismatic, firmly focused on economic development and – if recent political polls are to be believed – has a 20-point lead in the polls to become the next governor of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. But while Diego Sinhué Rodríguez has at least 10 years of political experience under his belt
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By RICARDO CASTILLO A small incident provoked by a well-known journalist highlighted a problem that is beleaguering the current Mexican electoral process. Over the past weekend, the news that political columnist Ricardo Alemán had been fired by two television stations was news. Curiously enough, Alemán was not fired for any content in his two political programs. He was fired for forwarding
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It’s been more than one month of presidential electoral campaign and about the only thing that is certain is that the political trend of the candidates has not budged. But now voters are busy again as the campaigns for Congress, nine state governors and municipal mayors officially kicked off on April 28, so expect that the publicity lambasting
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The good news is that more Mexicans are – at long last – interested in a presidential race. The figures for some foreign observers may not be impressive, but, locally, the audience participation results of last Sunday’s debate issued by the National Electoral Institute (INE) showed that 11.4 million Mexicans watched it and that two out of every
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The one sentence that pops out of the first Mexican presidential debate on the evening of last Sunday, April 22, was from the oldest of the candidates, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was forecast in my Pulse News Mexico column last week: “You’re ganging up on me” he told the other four presidential hopefuls. (“Me están echando montón”
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By RICARDO CASTILLO The stage is set, and all of Mexico is listening. At the last minute, the country’s National Electoral Institute (INE) announced the format for the first debate among presidential hopefuls slated for the evening of this coming Sunday, April 22. The debate will be nationally broadcast on both radio and television. The INE was forced to make shifts in the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Tweeting Donald began his latest tirade against Mexico last Monday, April 2. when he warned that a new threat was impending over the poor, helpless USA because the Mexican government was allowing a “caravan of Hondurans” to cross into Mexico and that caravan was heading for the northern border. And, once again, POTUS threatened to cancel Mexico’s “milk cow,”
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By RICARDO CASTILLO With the Mexican elections now fully underway in a race for a total of 3,416 different posts, it is worth taking the time to look back on history and see how the country got this far into democracy, as well as reviewing the odd shape of the political alliances of nine parties into three separate
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