Guerrero Elects Leftist Governor
2011-02-01
Posted by: badanov
For a map, click here. For a map of Guerrero, click here
by Chris Covert
In a stunning reversal for the Partido Revolucionario Institutcional (PRI), voters in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero voted in a leftist coalition candidate as governor Sunday, according to various news accounts.
Angel Aguirre Rivero for the Nos Une coalition won 56 percent of the vote, leading its nearest competitor by nearly 13 percentage points.
The Nos Une coalition consisted of the Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD) and the Partido Trabajadora (PT), while its competitors included a coalition of PRI, Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico or Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) and Partido Nuevo Aliance (PANAL).
The PRI under the national leadership of Beatriz Parades Rangel last year scored a huge string of electoral victories in several Mexican governor races, holding 75 percent of seats, while only losing two and swapping two.
Parades Rangel steps down as leader of the PRI, to be replaced by current Coahuila governor Humberto Moreira next week, who is expected to lead the PRI in retaking the Mexican presidency in 2012.
Aguirre received 667,383 votes, or 56.08 while the PRI's Tiempos Mejores coalition candidate, Manuel Añorve, won 507,362 votes, or 42.61 percent. The Partido Accion Nacional candidate, Marcos Efren Parra, received 15,998 votes, or 1.34 percent.
In several southern Mexican states in the past the PRD has entered into coalitions with local PAN organizations. Such coalitions, as the argument goes, makes the PRD candidate more competitive with the much stronger PRI in elections.
The leader of the PRD, Andres Manuel Lopez Orbador, the PRD's candidate for president who came within a hair's breadth of defeating Felipe Calderon in 2006, has recently been critical of such arrangements, arguing that PRD is strong enough to win against PRI without combining with other parties, especially PAN.
A leftist win in Guerrero is no surprise since the state is long known as a center of small leftist and communist guerrilla movements since the 60s, and such insurgencies are likely to receive support from the local population. The Zapititstas, for example, have helped the PRD win in local races simply by demonstrating an alternative to guerilla warfare.
Two rebel groups currently operate in Guerrero mostly engaging in kidnapping and armed robberies to find their operations.
A leftist government in Guerrero is much more likely to accommodate drug cartels than a PRI or PAN governor. Lopez Obrador nas been constantly critical of Calderon's war against the cartel mainly by pointing out that resources to aid the poor have been diverted to fighting cartels. This strategy mirrors much of what PRI did during the growth of the Mexican drug business in the 80s and 90s before the start of the 2006 war.
Very little of the feared disruptions of the voting took place in Guerrero Sunday, most activity confined to the usual trading of charges of support by the drug cartels, usually by "narcomessages" placed on blankets in different parts of the state.
In other news, the leader of the PRD, Luis Sanchez Jimenez, said that PRD's Guerrero victory presages a defeat for the PRI in Mexico state this coming July. Enrique Peña Nieto, governor of Mexico state, is PRI's leading candidate for the presidency in 2012.
Sanchez Jimenes said that Peña Nieto has been sending resources into the state since last August in an effort to influence the vote.
A defeat of PRI in Mexico state would be devastating to the presidential aspirations of Peña Nieto. The governor recently hedged his bet for his drive for Los Pinos by outlawing coalition arrangements in Mexico state, a law that was recent affirmed by the Mexican supreme court. Critics of the ruling call it a "wedding gift" to Peña Nieto, who was recently wed to Angelica Rivera, a Mexican soap opera star.