Black Thursday 2005: A Coup d'Etat Begins Today in Mexico

[Beam Me Up]

Black Thursday 2005: A Coup d'Etat Begins Today in Mexico
By Al Giordano,
Posted on Thu Apr 7th, 2005 at 09:37:53 AM EST
In the hills outside of Mexico City, the temperature rose above 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, heating the political pressure-cooker that, today, Thursday, April 7, may boil over beyond the city limits of the capital and even the national borders.

The world may learn today that the work of the Mexican revolution is unfinished. Eighty-six years ago this week Mexican revolutionary General Emiliano Zapata was assassinated in a State-plotted ambush, on April 10, 1919. Eleven years ago, also at this springtime of year, leading presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated on the campaign trail, in Tijuana: on March 23, 1994. What President Vicente Fox, together with his former adversaries of the once-monolithic PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for seven decades prior to Fox’s 2000 electoral victory), are attempting today is nothing less than a pre-emptive coup d’etat: a political assassination, dressed up in legal technicalities no more serious than a parking ticket, to remove Mexico’s leading presidential candidate from the 2006 contest.

At 9:30 a.m. (Central Time Zone) Mexico City Governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador will address a multitude in the Zocalo, the village square of this country of 100 million Mexicans, a crowd that as of 7:30 this morning included at least a million of them...


From there he will go to the hall of the national Congress, in the neighborhood known as San Lázaro, and address the legislators, who will then debate and vote on whether to strip him of his political rights to run for president based on the thinnest of technicalities.

MORE: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/4/7/93753/46058

[Beam Me Up]

1. The Whole World is Watching

There is little question in this correspondent’s analysis that the pressure on Fox and the PRI to cement their little coup d’etat today comes from above, from the Bush administration in Washington, which has decided it cannot abide another democratic decision by another large Latin American country that would place Mexico with Brazil,  Argentina and Venezuela (among others such as Uruguay) in a Bolivarian bloc of resistance to the imposed policies from the North.

-snip-

But while the government of Washington appears hell-bent on ripping democracy from Mexican hands once again, the reaction from Civil Society in the United States is, for the second time in the five-year history of this newspaper (the first being the rejection of the US-backed coup d’etat in Venezuela in 2002),  emerging in opposition to the dirty tricks from inside the beltway.

It is, indeed, front-page news today throughout Mexico that yesterday’s Washington Post, accurately calling the supposed case against the Mexico City governor “trivial,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28426-2005Apr5.html

[Karmadillo]

3. delete

[Beam Me Up]

2. The struggle for real Democracy isn't only happening here.

Those who struggle in neighboring countries deserve our attention. We may need them and soon.

[Karmadillo]

4. Has Chavez "wrecked his country's private sector and made most of its

people poorer"? The words are in a major US newspaper so they must be true, but does anyone have a link to hard evidence to back up the claim? Thanks.

[Bridget Burke]

5. When writing about undocumented workers coming from Mexico...

So many have said "why don't they fix their country?"

Or, "why doesn't Fox fix it?" As the first non-PRI president since the 1910 Revolution, there was some hope. Today, April 7, 2005, is the date that Vicente Fox – if he gets his way in Congress - destroys his own historic legacy as a transitional pro-democracy figure and goes down in history the same kind of authoritarian cretin as presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo before him.

Mexicans have been struggling to improve their country for a long time, but it is a hard battle. The 1910 Revolution turned into a civil war & millions died. US activists speak with horror of 4 deaths at Kent State in 1970. Do they remember 1968's Tlatelolco Massacre where hundreds died. The full number remains unknown & the US backed the killers.

www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/intro.htm

Thanks for this information; I'll be following the story. Mexico is a great & beautiful country. Her future welfare affects everybody in this hemisphere.

[Beam Me Up]

6. Thanks Bridget Burke

:hi:

[donsu]

7. Fox will do what smirk wants, he's been BBBT&M

bullied, bribed, blackmailed, threatened (and if he doesn't obey they will murder him)

Mexico deserves better.

[Runcible Spoon]

8. democracy my ass. PLutocracy is more like it.

Mexico was bought by the same greedy transnationals that strangle our democracy. And here we sit bitching about a bunch of poor brown people coming over the border.

[anarchy1999]

9. Bush and Fox are better friends than we acknowledge, you think

Fox didn't discuss this with Bush while he was in Crawford?

By the way, I love Al G. He is a true hero to me.

Read up on him, I think most here will come to have the same degree of respect for him that I hold. Top 10, right up there with Robert Fisk. Fisk gets the Mid-East, Al G. gets Latin America!

(If I remember correctly, Al started long time ago with Traprock Peace Center www,traprockpeace.org )

[Robbien]

10. Thousands of Mexicans Protest Congress Mayor Vote

Tens of thousands of angry demonstrators flooded into Mexico City's main square to protest a vote in Congress later on Thursday that could force the popular leftist mayor out of the race for president in 2006.

Most of downtown was closed to traffic and hordes of police stood around nervously as the demonstration at the Zocalo, one of the world's biggest squares, was expected to swell to over 100,000 people.

The lower house will vote on Thursday and is expected to lift the legal immunity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador so he can face a contempt of court charge. If impeached, he would likely be fired as mayor, go to jail pending trial, and he could be banned from next year's election.


http://www.keralanext.com/news/readnext,1.asp?id=174201&pg=2

The Economist Intelligence Unit said it "could trigger widespread unrest, upset financial markets."

The publication said that the whole move to make sure the mayor cannot become president may backfire on those behind it. "The muddled case against him has won him even more political support, particularly since the government of President Vicente Fox has failed to resolve much larger cases of official corruption. His popularity will undoubtedly soar further. The loss of credibility of the elections could lead to mass disaffection with the political process.

If, on the other hand, Mr. López Obrador were indicted and then cleared of the charges against him before the election took place, he would emerge from the process with huge political capital. His legal victory would vindicate his claims that the case had been misused for political ends and lacked legal substance. In such an event, he could feasibly win the presidency in 2006 by a landslide."

[Judi Lynn]

11. Mexico City mayor formally announces plans to run for president

Mexico City mayor formally announces plans to run for president


By Mark Stevenson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
8:36 a.m. April 7, 2005



Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
waves to supporters from the balcony of city hall
in Mexico City, Mexico after a congressional
committee concluded Friday, April 1, 2005 that
there is sufficient evidence to proceed with
criminal charges against him in a land-use case.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday formally declared his intention to run for president next year – a widely expected decision that he announced after months of speculation and on the same day Congress was to decide whether he should face criminal charges.

If lawmakers rule against him, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador could be knocked out of the 2006 presidential race and placed on trial on a legal technicality.

Lopez Obrador, a messianic leftist who once described himself as "a ray of hope" for the Mexican people, announced his attentions before thousands of supporters in Mexico City's main plaza who waved banners and flags in the black and yellow colors of his Democratic Revolution Party and chanted slogans to protest a congressional vote against him.

"Wherever I am, I am going to compete for the internal vote of my party for the presidency of the republic," Lopez Obrador said as a loud cheer erupted from the crowd.
(snip/...)

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20050407-0836-mexico-mayor-presidency.html

[Judi Lynn]

12. Reuters story:Move Against Mexico City Mayor Sets Off Protests

Move Against Mexico City Mayor Sets Off Protests
By REUTERS

Published: April 7, 2005

Filed at 10:43 a.m. ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of angry demonstrators flooded into Mexico City's main square to protest a vote in Congress later on Thursday that could force the popular leftist mayor out of the race for president in 2006.
Most of downtown was closed to traffic and hordes of police stood around nervously as the demonstration at the Zocalo, one of the world's biggest squares, was expected to swell to over 100,000 people.

The lower house will vote on Thursday and is expected to lift the legal immunity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador so he can face a contempt of court charge. If impeached, he would likely be fired as mayor, go to jail pending trial, and he could be banned from next year's election.

Newspapers reported that the mayor said goodbye to his aides on Wednesday, telling them: ``I'm leaving. But to all of you: Keep your heads up.''

The case has split Mexico and shaken investors concerned about turmoil or violence in a major oil-producing nation where the United States and European countries like Spain have large business and strategic interests.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mexico.html
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[Beam Me Up]

13. kick

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