With a by-your-leave to AMLO's idealistic supporters.
Previously I have posted about some contacts from Mexico about who are PAN/Calderon and PRD/Obrador supporters: That the PAN people, more from the industrialized and more prosperous North, are working people of the head-just-above-the-waterline-and-above sort, not the super-rich, and their anti-OBRADOR feelings are VOCIFEROUS, paranoid about losing their hard-won-gains to the underclass.
Today, the author of "Mexican Messiah," George W. GRAYSON, was on the radio again, responding to the latest developments of the electoral commission refusing a full recount, allowing only 10% recount in the areas where PAN victories appeared unusual, and the current blockade of Mexico City's central district by AMLO's followers.
He said: That OBRADOR is "authoritarian, dogmatic, messianic, lays claim to a higher mandate," that the PRI of old would have been easier to deal with because it was "more pragmatic, BELIEVES IN NOTHING."
He said that the working people in the capital are furious at being blockaded in getting to work, that 60% of the tourist business is being interfered with, that OBRADOR might call for a disruption of FOX's state of the union speech and the swearing in of the congress, that on the other hand OBRADOR's followers "are relatively small in number, but that if there were "a bloodbath like 1968, the U.S. border region can expect an overflow of persons fleeing."
*******QUOTE*******
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.mexico04aug04,0,1317871.story?coll=bal-oped-headlinesMexican left's false messiah
By George W. Grayson
Originally published August 4, 2006
A messianic politician has laid siege to Mexico City. He is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the self-described "Little Ray of Hope" for the dispossessed who served as an extremely popular mayor of this metropolis from 2000 to 2005. He and his apostles have installed 47 encampments in the Zocalo central plaza and along major thoroughfares, turning the heart of the capital into a huge parking lot teeming with furious motorists.
"To those who don't think like us, I offer a sincere apology for the inconveniences that our movement can cause," Mr. Lopez Obrador sermonized. "I hope that one day they come to ... understand that this struggle is necessary." ....
If Mr. Lopez Obrador were an orthodox politician, he would calmly await the tribunal's ruling without occupying the capital. Even if not declared the victor, he accomplished remarkable gains in the recent election. He rolled up twice the vote of his party's standard-bearer six years ago. He also helped the left soar to all-time highs in Congress: 160 seats in the 500-member Chamber of Deputies and 36 seats in the 128-member Senate.
Above all, he placed economic inequality (the 10 percent elite control 45 percent of national wealth) and poverty (nearly 50 percent of the nation's 107.5 million people) high on the country's agenda. Mr. Calderon, a moderate who is inspired by social-Christian principles, has already assembled a task force to improve the nation's public health system. ....
Yet by indulging in holier-than-thou rhetoric and alienating the public with street blockages, he is
smearing the image of the left and laying the groundwork for his own political crucifixion.
George W. Grayson teaches government at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. His e-mail is gwgray@wm.edu. ********UNQUOTE*******