Mexico's right wins oil privatization

[DainBramaged]

IN A major victory for Mexico's President Felipe Calderón and his right-wing National Action Party (PAN), both houses of Congress overwhelmingly voted to privatize Mexico's state oil company PEMEX.

Ex-presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO, as he is known in Mexico) led resistance to the sell-off with more than a year of mass marches, sit-ins and civil disobedience. Hundreds of "brigades" of nonviolent direct action activists formed across Mexico, and AMLO toured the country, speaking to huge crowds.

In July 2006, AMLO was the Party of the Democratic Revolution's (PRD) candidate for president, and he was almost certainly elected president. But PAN electoral fraud put Calderón in power. AMLO and his followers have never recognized Calderon and continue to refer to AMLO as the "legitimate president."

Millions of Mexicans actively opposed the privatization and took part in popular referendums, but Calderón relied on repression and control of the state apparatus to ram it through.

On the day of the vote, AMLO led tens of thousands of protesters to the doors of the National Assembly. The movement was strong enough to force the PAN leadership of Congress to agree to meet with AMLO before the vote, allowing him a 30-minute speech opposing privatization.

Before voting started, some 30 left-wing deputies took over the podium in an unsuccessful attempt to disrupt the process. But the vote itself revealed the balance of forces within the political system.

The Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), which ruled Mexico as a one-party state for most of the 20th century and is now the second biggest in the assembly behind the PAN, actively supported Calderón, as did the tiny Mexican Green Party. The Green Party was created by the PRI as a means to absorb protest votes in the 1980s and generally remains loyal to Mexico's corrupt political establishment, so its support came as no surprise.

However, while some PRD congressional representatives voted against the privatization, along with the small Workers Party (PT), a majority of PRD senators and a large number of deputies in the lower house broke with AMLO and voted in favor of privatization, exposing a deep schism within the PRD between the left and the right, and raising the possibility of a split in the party.

http://socialistworker.org/2008/11/05/mexico-oil-privatization

[aquart]

1. They're going to be so sorry.

[DainBramaged]

2. Not the ones who wanted to privatize it, they'll get rich.

Just like here. So sad.

[FREEWILL56]

3. I wonder how much bushco is involved in this?

No need to wonder I suppose as it stinks like them.