"Mexico candidates avoid drug debate" by Nick Miroff | Washington Post February 26, 2012
MEXICO CITY - Mexico’s drug war has cost 50,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006, and when voters go to the polls to elect a new leader July 1, that dreadful figure may cost his party the presidency.
Ever-expanding violence and insecurity have left many Mexicans desperate for a leader who can stem the killings and pacify the gangsters.
Then LEGALIZE and try to get the intelligence agencies out of the operations as much as possible.
But public frustration has not translated into a substantive policy debate about how to change course, and political analysts say whoever succeeds Calderon will probably continue fighting the cartels in similar fashion - by working closely with the United States and relying heavily on the Mexican military....
Related: AmeriKa's War on Mexico
Yeah, hadn't heard much about that one, what with the handfuls of others we are waging across the planet.
In surveys, security and job creation are consistently the two most important issues cited by respondents, independent pollster Jorge Buendia said, but the presidential candidates have generally avoided the issues. “Reporters don’t ask, and they never move beyond generalities,’’ he said.
Gee, does THAT EVER HAVE the RING of FAMILIARITY, fellow Americans!
When pressed for specifics, the candidates tend to offer airy platitudes instead....
You sure this is the Mexican campaign?
The presidential vote is set for July 1, but Mexico’s campaign season will not be in full swing until next month.
Translation: we are being prepped with filler.
For now, contenders are technically considered “precandidates,’’ barred from spending and stumping as official nominees. But for all practical purposes, a three-way presidential contest is well underway.
You guys are going to drive me to doing drugs.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party has placed its hopes for a comeback on Enrique Pena Nieto, the telegenic former governor of the state of Mexico, the country’s most populous. For months he has held a double-digit lead in polls, but his momentum has been slowed by stumbles and by insinuations from opponents - and Calderon - that his party will go soft on the traffickers.
Obviously they have friends there.
A Pena Nieto victory would return his party to an office it lost in 2000 after ruling for 71 years through an extensive network of patronage, corruption, and Mexican-style machine politics....
Mexicans really want that back?
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former Mexico City mayor, will run against him as the candidate of the left-leaning Revolutionary Democratic Party. Lopez Obrador lost to Calderon in 2006 by such a narrow margin that he refused to accept the results and spent more than a year calling himself “Mexico’s legitimate president.’’ He remains rock-star popular with many of Mexico’s poor.
Yes, that's right, we had a STOLEN ELECTION way back when in Mexico -- and a candidate with the balls enough to say so! Oh, Amerikans.... !!!!
More than any candidate in the race, Lopez Obrador has made an issue of the Mexican government’s drug war strategy. He promises to send the military back to its barracks within six months of taking office and to focus instead on the underlying social causes of rampant criminal violence.
That means legalize, that means addressing wealth inequality, that means another rigged election in Mexico.
Analysts say that’s not necessarily the policy shift Mexican voters are looking for, but options are limited.
Translation: He should win a legitimate election.
A new president could push for the elimination of low-paid local-level police departments - ripe targets for cartel recruitment - in favor of state-level forces. The country’s law enforcement and security bureaucracies could be consolidated under a single crime-fighting agency.
What's with the PUSH for CENTRALIZATION when it has been proven that DOES NOT WORK?
And a new president could decide to give the Drug Enforcement Administration and other US agencies more latitude to operate in Mexico, or less.
Today about 50,000 Mexican soldiers and marines, sporting full body armor and machine guns, patrol the country’s highways and urban neighborhoods.
Ah, freedom.
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Yeah, how's that militarization working out anyway?
"44 killed during prison riot in Mexico" by Associated Press | February 20, 2012
MONTERREY, Mexico — A fight among inmates led to a prison riot in northern Mexico that killed 44 people yesterday, officials said.
Jorge Domene Zambrano, a spokesman for the Nuevo Leon state public security department, said the riot broke out at about 2 a.m. in a high-security section of a prison in Apodaca outside the northern industrial city of Monterrey.
Several inmates attacked others, and the fighting then spread, Domene said. Forty-four people died before authorities regained control of the prison a couple of hours later, he said.
Deadly fights happen periodically in Mexico’s prisons as gangs and drug cartels stage jail breaks and battle for control of penitentiaries, often with the involvement of officials....
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Also see: Massive Mexican meth stockpile seized
