Monthly Archives: June 2012

Mexico

Seven local Mexican elections to watch on Sunday

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With polls showing that Sunday’s federal elections will be a landslide for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, we have to look to the state-level elections for any suspense.

Not to be forgotten amid the federal elections, six states and Mexico’s federal district hold elections on Sunday.

The seven elections take place in jurisdictions that are home to over one-quarter of Mexico’s population.  They will occur in some of the richest and poorest states of Mexico, in the north and the south, and in places with robust democratic traditions and in places that have remained corrupt PRI strongholds.  In sum, the seven contests seem to hold at least some good news for each of the three main parties:

  • In the Distrito Federal, Miguel Ángel Mancera (pictured above, bottom), the candidate of the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) is likely to win the race for head of government, a position the PRD has held continuously since 1997.
  • In Jalisco, Guadalajara’s mayor Aristóteles Sandoval, another young and charismatic priista (pictured with Peña Nieto above, top) is likely to take the governorship from the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) for the first time since 1995.
  • The tightest race looks to be in tiny Morelos, where the PRI and the PRD are locked in a tight battle to succeed the outgoing PAN governor.
  • The PAN is expected to hold onto the governorship in Guanajuato, which it has also held since 1995 when former president Vicente Fox first won it.
  • The young, PRI-affiliated Manuel Velasco Coello is likely to win in Chiapas, and the PRI also looks set to retain the governorships of Yucatán and Tabasco.

Here’s a deeper look at each of the seven races. Continue reading Seven local Mexican elections to watch on Sunday →

Mexico

From Cárdenas to López Obrador: Why the Mexican left just can’t win

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It’s been a bad century or so for you if you’re a Mexican leftist.

Barring a huge upset, Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections are not going to change that.

Despite coming within a very narrow margin of winning Mexico’s presidency in 2006, the candidate of the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), Andrés Manuel López Obrador seems likely to do much more poorly this time around — despite a poll boost that’s seen him overtake Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) earlier this month, and despite an anti-PRI youth movement, #YoSoy132, that has rallied opposition to the PRI (although not necessarily in favor of the PRD).

López Obrador — or “AMLO” as he’s known in the media and among his supporters — is holding a large rally in central Mexico City today to wrap up his presidential campaign, starting on the Reforma, Mexico’s grand avenue, and marching all the way to the Zócalo, the central square of Mexico City.

And while he may well come within single digits of the frontrunner, Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), it seems almost assured that 2012 — like 2006 and so many elections before it — will not be the year for Mexico’s left.

López Obrador, who has, fairly or unfairly, been tagged as a bit of a messianic figure in Mexican politics, refused to cede the PRD’s presidential nomination to his successor as Mexico City’s mayor, Marcelo Ebrard.  Ebrard, who lacks López Obrador’s baggage and who is viewed as much more centrist, could well have given Peña Nieto a strong run.  Given the recent success in several 2010 gubernatorial races of PAN-PRD coalitions, it is possible that Ebrard could have challenged Peña Nieto in a two person-race on such a PAN-PRD banner nationally. Continue reading From Cárdenas to López Obrador: Why the Mexican left just can’t win →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: June 27

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The Queen shakes hands with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness (sporting a stylish green outfit!)

Martin Wolf says Spain should have just said no to the euro.

Antonis Samaras won’t be able to travel for the next 40 days. (Will Greece even still be solvent by then?)

Facing the real possibility of its own political extinction, PASOK is already distancing itself from Samaras’s government.  (Will the government even last for the next 40 days?)

Merkel on eurobonds: not ‘as long as I live’.

President-elect Morsi will appoint a female and a Coptic vice president, apparently. If true, that would be quite something.

Bagehot wonders if a Brixit is coming.

Mexico

Drug cartels and the security issue in the Mexican election

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One issue I have not emphasized much in advance of the Mexican presidential and legislative elections is the drug issue, because I don’t think that the issue alone has necessarily driven the resurgence of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the popularity of presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto.

But it’s of course a huge issue, especially in the background, and it does account for a lot of the fatigue with outgoing president Felipe Calderón.  William Finnegan in The New Yorker and Patrick Radden Keefe in the The New York Times Magazine both provide amazing accounts in the past week or two, with stunning insights into the Mexican drug cartels: the power of the longtime Sinaloa cartel and its head, Joaquín Guzmán; their rivals, the Zetas (a mutant sect of one-time elite army forces-turned-criminals); and the Calderón administration’s “war” against the drug cartels.

Calderón enlisted Mexico’s military to combat the drug trade in 2006.  The results of that effort have not exactly been successful: an army that’s now distrusted by the citizenry, but not feared by the drug lords; spreading (although still very localized) violence; 55,000 Mexicans dead in six years; and a public that’s generally weary of additional Mexican bloodshed.  But the drug violence is really just one among several issues — lack of progress in reducing corruption, economic reforms, GDP growth and unemployment, lack of further energy development — where the public has gotten frustrated with Calderón and with his predecessor, Vicente Fox, in the 12 years that the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) has held Mexico’s presidency.

You should take the time to read both stories — they provide a fascinating background for Sunday’s general election (and make clear that reducing drug use is a demand-side problem currently in Sisyphean pursuit of a supply-side solution).  But I would caution against using them as the sole prism through which to view Mexican politics, for various reasons.

The drug war is an issue that gets plenty of exposure in the American media space, but probably more exposure than it should.  For much of the past six years, the American media has generally overemphasized the drug violence to the point where many Americans now assume that all of Mexico is a war zone. That’s ridiculous, of course — it should be taken with a grain of salt (or maybe a gram of something stronger), but anecdotally, I get the sense that this is one of several pressing issues in Mexican public life for Mexicans, but not the overweening issue.  Growing the economy, reducing unemployment, further tax reform, labor market reform, reducing corruption, reducing poverty, political reform, trade and foreign relations — all are just as important to Mexicans.

It’s also important to remember that drug violence varies widely by region.    Continue reading Drug cartels and the security issue in the Mexican election →

Mexico

Forget EPN and his good looks…

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…here’s a throwback from the bad old days of the PRI era: José López Portillo, president from 1976 to 1982, who bears a striking resemblance to the character of George Bluth from Arrested Development.

Cornballers in every kitchen!

But seriously, Mexico is not going to go back to the López Portillo era if, as polls predict, the PRI sweeps elections on Sunday.

Mexico

The PRI also looks likely to sweep Mexico’s congressional elections on July 1

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The presidential race’s outcome may seem all but certain, but the race for Los Pinos has nonetheless received much more coverage than the legislative elections that take place on July 1 as well — and are just as vital to the comeback hopes for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).

In addition to electing a president, Mexicans will elect 500 members to the lower chamber, the Cámara de Diputados, and 128 members to the upper chamber, the Senado.

If polls are accurate, not only will the PRI’s presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, win, but it will also win an absolute majority in the Cámara de Diputados — the first time that a party has won an absolute majority since electoral reforms in 1996, which would give Peña Nieto the best environment in over 15 years to pass legislation in Mexico.  A Mitofsky poll released yesterday shows that the PRI and its allies would win 44% of the Congressional vote to 29% for the PRD and its allies and 24.5% for the PAN.

Although the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) has controlled the presidency since 2000, first under Vicente Fox and then under Mexico’s incumbent president, Felipe Calderón, it never controlled an absolute majority of seats in the Cámara de Diputados and only from 2000-03 and from 2006-09 did it even hold the largest share of seats.  Given that dynamic, the PRI and the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) have been able to unite in opposition to the PAN, frustrating the extent of Fox and Calderón to enact major reforms (although Calderón has passed minor tax reforms in 2005 and energy reforms in 2008).

Under the current rules, 300 deputies are elected on the basis of first-past-the-post plurality in single-member districts.  An additional 200 deputies are elected by proportional representation — each party that wins 2% is entitled to its share of seats.

No party, however, can win more than 300 seats in total — 200 seats must always be apportioned to opposition parties.  As most reforms in Mexico are “constitutional reforms” requiring a 2/3 supermajority, most major initiatives therefore require a broad base of support.  While that is of some assurance to those who are worried about the PRI’s authoritarian roots — Peña Nieto and the PRI won’t likely be able to push through legislation that would repress the gains of Mexican democracy — it also is the primary reason that Fox and Calderón have not accomplished any truly landmark legislative victories in the past 12 years.  Continue reading The PRI also looks likely to sweep Mexico’s congressional elections on July 1 →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: June 26

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In Egypt, SCAF’s order reinstating parts of the ’emergency law’ to facilitate citizen detainment has been invalidated by an administrative court.

FT Alphaville gives us a lesson on the Indian rupee and on Oscar Wilde:

“Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence. The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side.”

Ousted Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo is now mounting a challenge to his impeachment, as the Organization of American States starts to weigh its response.

An interview from allAfrica with Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The PAN is declaring open war on “vulgar cheerleader” and “traitor” Vicente Fox.

Soros on Europe.

Serbia is still wrangling over forming a government.

Abdoulaye Wade is not fading away in Senegal.

Lots of folks are running for president of South Korea.

Beijing prepares for a transition in Hong Kong.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is leaning autocrat these days.

 

Greece

Who is Yiannis Stournaras?

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After a rough start for Greece’s newly inaugurated center-right government — Greece’s new prime minister Antonis Samaras remains immobilized from an emergency eye surgery over the weekend and his first pick for finance minister (Vassilis Rapanos, the head of the National Bank of Greece) resigned after falling ill last Friday — it looks like Greece finally has a finance minister.

Samaras has appointed Yiannis Stournaras as the new finance minister, although Stournaras will not attend the European Union summit in Rome that kicks off Thursday.  Samaras will not be able to attend, nor will the party leaders of his two coalition partners, Evangelos Venizelos, the leader of the center-left PASOK and Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of the more anti-austerity Democratic Left.  Instead, Greek president Karolos Papoulias, will lead the Greek delegation.

Meanwhile, in another blow to the Samaras government, newly installed deputy shipping minister George Vernikos resigned Tuesday after opponents pointed to his use of offshore companies, which are often used by Greeks to avoid taxes.

Stournaras is a generally respected professor and economist — most recently, he has served as the general director of the influential Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, a Greek economic think tank and as development minister in the caretaker government between the May 6 and June 17 elections.

He is most well-known for his role in designing economic policy in advance of Greece’s accession into the eurozone and is known in Greece as “Mr. Euro” — it’s certainly difficult to miss the symbolism in that.  Stournaras has also worked as special adviser to Greece’s finance ministry and the Bank of Greece in the 1980s and 1990s.

Reuters reports that the Stournaras appointment, although widely applauded, does not guarantee any quick solution for the Greek economy’s future:

He faces a difficult juggling act – pushing for more time and money from sceptical foreign lenders while coaxing reluctant officials at home to push through unpopular reforms.

“Stournaras is a serious, respected person who will inspire some confidence in the markets. But he is entering a bad government, where many old-style, spendthrift politicians are occupying key positions,” said political analyst John Loulis.

“He will have to wage a hard battle against them. He is entering the wolf’s lair and he won’t survive without the prime minister’s solid support.”

A troubling nugget comes from The Financial Times, whichreports that none other than PASOK leader Venizelos, also the former finance minister who negotiated Greece’s second bailout (that the government now hopes to renegotiate), just last week vetoed the reappointment of Stournaras as the permanent development minister.

Cyprus, Greece

No country for old men

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It’s not been the best week for the new Greek government.

Later this week, the key decision-makers of the European Union will be engaged in the latest attempt at ending the eurozone’s crisis at a conference in Rome.

But the new Greek prime minister won’t be there. And neither will his finance minister, a post that may now be vacant.

A week after his center-right, pro-bailout New Democracy won a narrow victory in Greece’s parliamentary elections, Antonis Samaras had emergency surgery over the weekend to repair a detached retina.

Meanwhile, his nominee for finance minister, Vassilis Rapanos, the president of Greece’s national bank, has resigned (or turned down the offer — he was never formally sworn in) after falling ill on Friday and being rushed to the hospital.

Newly sworn-in foreign minister Dimitris Avramopoulos won’t attend.

Neither will Evangelos Venizelos, a former finance minister and leader of the center-left (and also pro-bailout) PASOK nor Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of the more leftist (and moderately anti-bailout) Democratic Left.  Both PASOK and the Democratic Left are supporting Samaras’s government, but have refused to take any ministerial roles in the new government — indeed, both Venizelos and Kouvelis seem incredibly terrified that the staunchly anti-bailout and radical leftist SYRIZA will steal even more of their support base.  SYRIZA placed a strong second in the June 17 elections and now threatens to displace PASOK as the dominant party of the Greek left.

Greece’s president, Karolos Papoulias, will lead the delegation instead.

Leading Greek newspaper To Pontiki calls out the government for its “sloppy handling” of Greece’s representation in Rome, but it is hard to blame Samaras too much for the unfortunate timing of two medical emergencies.  But the incident marks an ominous tone for Greece at a time when the country seems to have days or weeks (not months) to shore up Greece’s position in the eurozone.  After a campaign in which even Samaras agreed that the bailout package should be renegotiated in a way to help the Greek economy out of recession, it will be a massive blow to Samaras’s government that he will not be in Rome, nor will his initial choice for finance minister, nor will the leaders of the two parties that are his coalition partners.

In other news likely to be depressing to Athens, the country with the largest exposure to Greece’s banks has now requested a bailout from the European Union as well — Cyprus needs €1.8 billion this week to shore up Cyprus Popular Bank.  The amount, tiny by EU bailout standards, represents 10% of Cyprus’s GDP.  Although the European Central Bank will want to impose some conditions on the bailout, Cyprus has also been talking to Moscow and Beijing about a cash infusion, making the Cyprus situation not only a financial headache for Athens, but a strategic headache for Berlin and Brussels as well (and it’s not as if the EU doesn’t have one or two problems that make even Greece seem like an afterthought).

Mexico

Why fears about the return of the PRI to power in Mexico are wrong

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Jo Tuckman had an engaging piece in The New York Times on Sunday, decrying the “lost years” of Mexican democracy and sounding some alarm about the likely return to power in Mexico of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) when Enrique Peña Nieto, as widely predicted, wins the presidential election on July 1.

She asks:

How is it, then, that the party’s candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, seems poised to win the presidential election next Sunday and become the leader of 113 million Mexicans?

The answer is that Peña Nieto has run a much (much) superior campaign than Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) or Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).  The PAN has held the presidency for 12 consecutive years, so it has taken the brunt of criticism over the Mexican economy, drug violence and the less-than-galloping pace of political and economic reform, even though it doesn’t control Congress, and the PRI and the PRD have opposed most of president Felipe Calderón’s agenda.  For its own part, the PRD still isn’t truly a political presence in northern Mexico and López Obrador blew a huge lead in the 2006 presidential election and refused to cede the PRD’s shot in 2012 to the younger and more centrist Marcelo Ebrard.

The PRI, of course, governed Mexico from 1929 until 2000, often with a healthy dose of authoritarianism, an even healthier dose of electoral fraud and a lot of government spending diverted to bolstering the party.  For most of the PRI’s reign, it’s safe to say, Mexico was something short of a strict dictatorship (Mexico’s government had certain features that limited authoritarian abuse, such as a six-year term limit for Mexican presidents), but nothing like a liberal democracy.

But Tuckman is wrong to call the last 12 years a lost opportunity, and she’s wrong that the impending return of the PRI indicates that Mexican democracy is in danger — if anything, the PRI’s return indicates that Mexican democracy is thriving.

It would be prudent, of course, for Mexican civil society to remain vigilant for any signs of backsliding, and groups, such as the youthful YoSoy132 movement, are pressing this very point within Mexico.  As it turns out, Televisa, Mexico’s largest television network, had been selling favorable coverage to Peña Nieto — in years past, the PRI may have gotten away with that; instead, it was plastered earlier this month across global headlines when The Guardian broke the scandal (back in 2000, Mexico’s oil company, Pemex, gave $140 million in loans to certain PRI-backed unions, who in turn donated the cash to the PRI’s then-presidential candidate Francisco Labastida, who still lost handsomely), embarrassing Televisa, the PRI and Peña Nieto.

A lot of people think that 2000 — the year that the PAN’s Vicente Fox wont he presidency — marks the key transition for Mexican democracy.  Fox’s election was indeed a landmark for Mexican democracy, but the real turning point came a bit earlier — in 1994. Continue reading Why fears about the return of the PRI to power in Mexico are wrong →

Egypt

Morsi declared winner of presidential runoff in Egypt

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So it’s Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been elected the first civilian president in the first free and fair elections (presumably) in the modern history of Egypt, which were held last weekend.

I have to say, I was anticipating the fair chance of an announcement of Ahmed Shafiq as the “winner,” notwithstanding the actual vote tally.

Morsi won 51.73% to just 48.27% for Ahmed Shafiq, the former Air Force commander, former Mubarak prime minister and likely favored candidate of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has been a bit schizophrenic of late, to say the least, in its willingness to hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The announcement of Morsi’s victory comes after Morsi himself declared victory last Monday in the wake of unofficial counts showing him with a small, but meaningful, lead.  It’s still unclear why there’s been a delay in the announcement, which was supposed to come on Thursday.

Of course, Morsi has been elected president without anyone in Egypt knowing what that means.  Since no constitution has been drafted, it’s unclear whether Morsi will have any real power or will rather be a figurehead.

In the final hours of voting, however, SCAF announced amendments to the Constitutional Declaration promulgated in March 2011 granting itself the right to assume parliamentary powers, the right to approve the state budget, the right to veto the president’s decisions about declaring war and the right to intrude on the constitution-writing process.  On the previous Thursday, the Supreme Constitutional Court invalidated the January 2012 parliamentary elections, thereby suspending Egypt’s short-lived parliament.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 235 of the 508 parliamentary seats (another 121-seat bloc went to the more conservative, Salafist Al-Nour Party).

So with Morsi’s presidential victory, the Muslim Brotherhood would have been in a very strong position to, you know, actually have real power in Egypt.  Likely, the prospect of a transition to an Islamist government spooked SCAF, which has clumsily tried to rewrite the rules of the transition to give it a role akin to the Turkish military during much of the 20th century — embedded in the fabric of government (which meant that it continued to benefit from corruption and graft) and “guardian” of the secular nature of the Turkish state (which meant that, until the Erdoğan government in 2003, it would stage a coup upon the election of any Islamist government).

Morsi won 13.23 million votes out of the 26.42 million cast to just 12.35 million for Shafiq.  The election commission invalidated over 843,000 votes, less than the total margin of victory for Morsi.

It is now up to Morsi to show that he will be a president for all Egyptians, including the wide swath of pro-revolutionary voters — non-Islamists, secularists, moderates, liberals, nationalists — who supported Morsi as the only option in the face of Shafiq, whose potential election was largely seen as representing a step back to Mubarak-style semi-authoritarianism.

It is also now up to Morsi to work with SCAF to bring some conclusion to the turmoil of recent weeks and bring the transition from Mubarak to democracy (however imperfect) to a more settled conclusion, and to work with SCAF to oversee the re-instating of parliament or new elections for parliament, as well as to oversee the Constituent Assembly that will draft the constitution — before its suspension, the parliament had agreed to a body comprised 50% each of Islamists and non-Islamists.

Khairat al-Shater, the deputy chair of the Muslim Brotherhood, confirmed this week that his group and SCAF were conducting negotiations about the transfer of power.  Al-Shater, a popular former businessmen, who is seen as a pragmatic Islamist, was the Brotherhood’s first candidate for president, but was disqualified in April.

Whatever happens, it appears that SCAF, which is supposed to hand over power in a grand June 30 ceremony, will still play a significant role in Egypt’s Morsi era as well as its post-Mubarak era: Continue reading Morsi declared winner of presidential runoff in Egypt →

Paraguay

Lugo’s impeachment in Paraguay a setback for the South American left

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Paraguay is an oft-forgotten, landlocked country in the heart of South America with just 6.5 million people and one of the lowest GDP per capita on the continent (it’s half of Peru’s and just one-third of Venezuela’s), and it has only a very shaky foundation in democratic institutions. 

So it was with some alarm on Friday that its president Fernando Lugo was impeached and removed from office four years into his term on the basis of “poor performance” after a botched police raid resulted in 17 deaths last week:

Speaking on national television on Thursday, Mr Lugo said he would not resign, but “face the consequences” of the trial. He accused his opponents of carrying out an “express coup d’etat”.

But the Paraguayan chamber of deputies voted rapidly and overwhelmingly in favor of impeachment, and the Paraguayan senate followed with a move to remove Lugo on Friday.

Lugo’s vice president, Federico Franco, has now assumed the presidency and has announced he will serve out the rest of Lugo’s term until the April 2013 presidential election, although Mercosur has not recognized Franco’s takeover and other Latin American leaders have rejected Lugo’s impeachment as a coup d’etat.  The United States has urged caution, but the key question for Paraguay is whether the Organization of American States and the Union of South American Nations will take a united front against the impeachment — and Franco is taking efforts to keep the impeachment from turning into an international crisis.

Lugo’s removal gained nearly unanimous support in the Paraguayan Congress, from not only the opposition Partido Colorado, but also from the center-right Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico (the “Authentic Liberal Radical Party” or PLRA) of Lugo’s vice president, a one-time ally.  Nonetheless, both Dionisio Borda, the finance minister, and Jorge Corvalán, the president of Paraguay’s central bank resigned on Saturday.

Given that the most vociferous criticism of the impeachment is coming from countries with more leftist governments, including Ecuador, Argentina and the Dominican Republic, it seems more likely that Latin American officials will split on the basis of ideological differences — more leftist officials will be much more likely to view the impeachment as a coup and more right-wing officials will view the impeachment as legitimate.

Lugo ran for election four years ago chiefly on a platform of redistributing land to Paraguayan peasants, so it is ironic that his impeachment stems directly from a botched eviction of landless tenants by police that resulted in 17 deaths.

His election in April 2008 sent shockwaves throughout Latin America and in a country that has often seemed trapped in a 19th century political dynamic  — the name of the Colorado Party, the ruling party of strongman Alfredo Stroessner, who governed the country from 1954 to 1989, even harkens back to the colorado-blanco dynamic of the dramatic 19th century fights between rural, conservative landowners and urban, liberal reformers that split much of Latin America throughout the region’s first century of post-colonial independence.  The Colorado party, still adjusting to Paraguay’s nascent democracy, had been in power for 61 years in 2008 when Lugo won the presidential election. Continue reading Lugo’s impeachment in Paraguay a setback for the South American left →

Egypt

Egypt to announce presidential election results Sunday at 3 pm

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Or so says the Presidential Elections Commission.

It’s been a bit of a hectic couple of weeks for Egypt, notwithstanding last Sunday’s presidential election runoff: it now has no parliament, no constitution, perhaps a dead former president and two potential living presidents, both of whom have declared victory.  And a very antsy Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that isn’t quite sure it’s ready to give up its transitional power.

In the meanwhile, we wait…

Mexico

Three candidates and two visions for Pemex reform in Mexican presidential race

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Although the outcome of Mexico’s tedious presidential race has long seemed inevitable, it has spawned a serious debate over how to revitalize the Mexican oil industry — and, in particular, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Mexico’s state-owned oil company.

Pemex is the second-largest company in all of Latin America (recently displaced by Brazil’s oil company, Petrobras).  The topic featured in a debate earlier this week among all but one of the Mexican presidential candidates, and it has been at the forefront of policy discussions throughout the Mexican campaign.

Pemex has long been a thorny problem for Mexico, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer.  Pemex is the source of around one-third of the government’s revenue, but the taxes and royalties that it pays to the government (around 60% of its revenues) have left it crippled and saddled with billions in debt, to say nothing of the corruption that has plagued the company throughout its history.

What this means is that, even when oil revenue have been at record-high prices, Pemex has been unable to reinvest in new technologies or further exploration.  To make matters even worse, Mexico’s main oil field production has already peaked and Pemex’s production recently fell at a faster rate than at any time since the 1940s.  Without reform, Mexico could become a net energy importer within a decade. Continue reading Three candidates and two visions for Pemex reform in Mexican presidential race →

Egypt

Morsi and Shafiq both declare victory in Egypt, as SCAF moves put transition in doubt

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Events have been moving quite rapidly in Egypt over the past two days as the initial count of the presidential runoff have taken place, and there’s been no shortage of media coverage as the story continues to unfold. 

In the immediate aftermath of the race, Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared victory on the strength of the Brotherhood’s tallies and the unofficial vote count that showed Morsi leading 52.5% to 4.7.5% over Ahmed Shafiq, his opponent, a former Air Force commander and the final prime minister of former president Hosni Mubarak, representing the ‘felool‘ (remnants) of the old regime.

Shafiq, however, backed by what remains of the technically-illegal National Democratic Party and viewed very much as the favored candidate of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, declared victory himself on Tuesday, throwing the result into further doubt.

The next step was supposed to be the announcement of final results on Thursday.  But on Tuesday, the President Elections Commission announced that it might wait until after Thursday to announce the full results.

Meanwhile: