By RICARDO CASTILLO Unwittingly, Mexico has now returned to the exact same quagmire that it revolted against more than 70 years ago: the one-party political system. Today, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) has both the presidency and a majority control in both houses of Congress, winning 53 percent of the vote in the July 1 elections. For at least the next three years, whatever
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By RICARDO CASTILLO What happened during the first week of the National Regeneration Movement’s (Morena) new majority in both Mexican houses of Congress (the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Senators) only served to prove what I had suspected: The Mexican left, now represented by the Morena political party, has been down so long that its members don’t know what to do
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By RICARDO CASTILLO It’s been five full weeks since Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won the Mexican presidential election. You’d think that he would be immediately recognized for his victory, at least with the moniker of “president-elect,” but in the national press, the moniker has instead been “virtual president-elect.” But as of Wednesday, Aug. 8, this situation will change. The Federal
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Slowly but surely, Mexico is preparing for the inevitable upcoming political transition. The surge of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) political party from scratch to the most powerful party in the country in a four-year period caught everyone by surprise. Suddenly, the political scene is confronted again with a one-party system, which has not been seen in Mexico since the 1970s,
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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 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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By RICARDO CASTILLO Good Friday will mark the beginning of the 2018 electoral campaign in Mexico. Up for grabs are the nation’s presidency, nine state governorships, 128 Senate seats, 500 Chamber of Deputies seats and 283 municipal mayoralties. There are also a number of state senate and assembly seats being vied for. Competition will be fierce and intense
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Some Mexicans just don’t like the way the electoral procedure is being carried out by the National Electoral Institute (INE). The problem is that those disgruntled Mexicans are blaming the INE for what they perceive as irregularities in the process, but the procedure was designed by Congress, and the only way out of this long and
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