¿Para votar o no Votar?
TODAY IS THE DAY of México’s midterm elections. While Felipe Calderón is not on the ballot, his policies are under scrutiny. Support for or against PAN, FeCal’s party, will be interpreted as approval or disapproval for his violence-heavy policies. Of course, that’s assuming the vote tallies are legit.
TODAY IS THE DAY of México’s midterm elections. While Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa is not on the ballot, his policies are under scrutiny. Support for or against the National Action Party (PAN), FeCal’s party, will be interpreted as approval or disapproval for his violence-heavy policies. Of course, that’s assuming the vote tallies are legitimate. For one thing, it’s expected that turnout will be low, and that could have a lot to do with the way the last vote went. As with George W. Bush’s “presidency,” many will simply never accept the validity of the controversial election results, and some of that group surely has lost belief in the process, altogether.
It’s far too much to try and weave all the backstory together here, but since El Grito, we’ve talked about these things. Even many times in my TMC posts I’ve come back to them. But come on, we need to. The body count under FeCal’s “crackdown on the cartels” stylie is over 10,000 now! This is one of those cures that kills the patient.
Unsurprisingly, this latest outgrowth of the “War on Drugs” is much applauded by US powers, from our President to CNN—which describes the weave of systems and families that benefit from the drug trade as “cartels that have taken hold of Mexico, spreading corruption, fear and violence to all corners of the nation.” You could say the same for the police or military forces, though.
Fact is, too many make a living fighting those who make a living off of drugs…which is only possible due to the harsh criminalizing stance both the US as well as México have on drugs in the first place. It’s an outdated stance that harms many humans. Encouragingly, it seems people are beginning to act to change this.
Will the vote today reflect the awareness of the People, or the will of the global Oligarchy? Will anyone believe the results? Does the vote even matter?
[...] about Mexico Violence as of July 5, 2009 Sunday, July 5, 2009 ¿Para votar o no Votar? – theunapologeticmexican.org 07/05/2009 TODAY IS THE DAY of México’s midterm elections . [...]
I agree that the outcome of the 2006 election had a lot to do with general disgust with the present system, but how much the “voto nulo” movement is connected to that … and how much to a movement to create a more U.S. style electoral system (one of the “reforms” the nulistas are pushing is for allowing for paid advertising) is hard to read. Jose Antonio Crespo, who is the front-man for the nulistas has consistently defined democracy in terms of democratic capitalism. He’s not necessarily wrong, but this implies the nulistas are not pushing for economic democracy.
Support for abstention, which was pushed by the Zapatistas (one reason I don’t completely trust their leadership) benefits the entrenched status quo. Ironically, the Zapatistas get along better with PAN (the right/far-right) than with the left… not surprising when you consider that both favor “traditional values”, just with a different set of traditions.
I expect PRI will benefit the most from this election, at the expense of both PRD and PAN. Given the proportional seating for a third of the Chamber and Senate, PRD will be the biggest loser.
sadly, it’s true that abstention usually only benefits the status quo. on the other hand, the status quo seems to have no trouble entrenching itself despite what the people do! what are you gonna do? try to change things on whatever level you can, as always. seeing any vote as “doing something” is, perhaps, the biggest mistake in the first place.
thanks richard.
Anyway, for those interested, I’m semi-live blogging (comatose blogging?) the results at MexFiles.net
Right now, the turnout is listed at 43.33 percent … which is higher than expected, actually.
Nobody is getting about 6.5 percent of the vote, which ain’t bad… or maybe is…