New Revolution (in Mexico)

Mexico moved one step closer to a social explosion with the Federal Election Tribunal's decision to crown conservative Felipe Calderon as the victor in the hotly contested presidential elections of July 2.
The tribunal acknowledged Calderon's campaign had "violated the norms of public order," particularly with the role played by the business associations in airing rabid TV ads attacking leftist candidate Andres Miguel Lopez Obrador.
But it refused to question the fundamental legitimacy of the elections or to recount all the votes as demanded by the leftist opposition.
Lopez Obrador immediately rejected the tribunal's ruling, declaring that a "privileged minority" has seized control of Mexico's institutions, "keeping the country in ruins and the majority in poverty".
He called for the convening on September 16 of a National Democratic Convention "to form a government that has the legitimacy to reestablish the Republic and constitutional order".
As he spoke tens of thousands of his supporters retained control for the 37th consecutive day of the centre of Mexico City around the Zocalo, the country's main historic plaza.
The rest of Mexico is also gripped with unrest, particularly the city of Oaxaca to the south. There some 350 popular organizations have staged a virtual insurrection, taking control of the city and demanding the ouster of the state's governor.
While not directly tied to the presidential election, the movement reflects the profound discontent in recent years that has led to similar uprisings in Chiapas, Mexico's southern most state, and in San Salvador Atenco, a city that borders on the capital.

Mexico A Class War Looms

Mexico City - The seven-judge panel known as the TRIFE, charged with deciding the legitimacy of Mexico's murky July 2 election and confirming the new president, is the nation's court of last resort.
What the judges decree is literally the last word, the end of the line; there is no appeal.
On September 5, the last day the Constitution mandated the TRIFE to rule on the most hotly contested balloting in Mexico's checkered electoral history, the judges pronounced their verdict: Outgoing President Vicente Fox's unconstitutional intervention in the electoral process on behalf of his handpicked successor, Felipe Calderón, had put the election "at risk."
Moreover, the financing of months of commercial spots that labeled leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) "a danger for Mexico" by transnational and national corporations was patently illegal and influenced voters.
The electoral tribunal also noted that Calderón, the PAN candidate who had been declared the winner by the much-criticized Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) by a razor-thin .55 percent of 41.6 million votes cast, had been awarded tens of thousands of votes that could not be substantiated. The TRIFE, in a partial recount of less than 10 percent of the 130,000 precincts held two weeks before the final decision, had annulled 237,000 votes, more than Calderón's supposed margin of victory.

Democracy in Mexico

by Stephen Lendman

There's much happening in Mexico in the aftermath of the nation's most contentious election ever, but it began many months before the first vote was cast. The popularity of leftist opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) scared the ruling National Action Party (PAN) enough to get them to try to deny him the right to run for president in the election just concluded. In April, 2005, a commission of four members of the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's Congress) held there was sufficient cause to suspect Obrador committed a crime when he ordered the construction of a service road to a hospital ignoring a judge's order against doing it. Obrador said he was just widening the road and stopped when he learned of the court order. The full Chamber ignored his explanation and then voted to strip him of his government immunity from prosecution so he could be indicted, have to stand trial and be constitutionally barred from holding or running for high office. The transparent scheme didn't work because the people of Mexico wouldn't tolerate it and turned out in mass street protests to support him.

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ICTs Shaping Mexican Democracy

The Role of Information & Communications Technology in Strengthening Citizen Participation Shaping Democracy:An Analysis of Mexico’s Initial Experience & Pending Challenges

Robert M. Kossick (Rkossick@aol.com)

Introduction
Information and communications technology (ICT) is considered to have a tremendous potential for facilitating increased levels of citizen participation in law and policy making and safeguarding processes. Time and again, cyber-commentators of all academic and professional stripe emphasize the empowering linkage between ICT and citizen participation.

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Faults seen in Mexico's democracy: Many citizens' hopes tempered as election nears

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS

SAN LUIS POTOSI, MEXICO - Like many thousands of Mexicans, Guillermo Pizzuto spent decades struggling to bring democracy to his country: marching in countless protests, enduring beatings by police, winning office as an opposition candidate.
Democracy finally is grabbing hold here.

Elections are mostly clean, and political parties unmolested. Local and state governments enjoy greater autonomy. Congress and the courts have been unleashed from presidential control. And this July's presidential elections might well be the most evenly balanced, wide open and unpredictable in Mexican history.
So Pizzuto feels vindicated, right?
Not even close.
Like many millions of Mexicans, Pizzuto thinks that democracy has come up far short. He and many others complain that the country's politicians are out to help themselves, not Mexico's poor majority.
"Democracy, such as it is, exists because there were a lot of people pushing for it from below," said Pizzuto, 61, whose family-owned foundry employs hundreds of workers in San Luis Potosi, a colonial city and industrial center in the high desert 250 miles north of Mexico City.
"It was an effort by many people, for many years," he said. "It wasn't about going after an election victory. It was about creating a space for society and government to work together."
"Seeing how things are now, who wouldn't be disappointed?"
Expectations overflowed nearly six years ago when Vicente Fox won the presidency, ending the seven-decade grip on national power held by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, an autocratic machine born of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
Many thought fair elections that alternated power between political parties would be enough to quickly end corruption, force rulers to heed the ruled, create more wealth and divide it more fairly.
"We held wrong assumptions," said political scientist Sergio Aguayo, an early leader of the democracy movement that sprang from the bitter 1988 presidential elections, which many think were stolen by the PRI.
"We expected that with electoral democracy there would be a trickle down of positive effects," Aguayo said. "That did not happen."
Today, corruption and abuse of power continue to plague Mexican public life. Gangland violence, drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime are as rampant as ever.
The Mexican economy ambles along much as it did when the government was less-than-democratic, failing to provide enough jobs for a growing population. With many wages barely above desperation level, hundreds of thousands of people illegally migrate to the United States seeking a future.
Things have changed, certainly. But they've stayed all too much the same.
"All Mexico thought that it was enough to overthrow the PRI and substitute it with another party for politics to work," said political analyst Luis Aguilar, a top political operative in the last PRI presidency in the 1990s.
"It was a terribly simplistic position in which the intellectuals and politicians participated. The PRI political system fell, but a democratic political system wasn't constructed."
Voter frustration was blamed for the abysmal participation in the July 2003 midterm elections, in which only 42 percent of voters turned out. Though interest is naturally higher in the coming presidential elections, none of the candidates this year has generated the excitement Fox did in 2000.
Former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, leads handily in most opinion polls on presidential preferences. He's followed by Felipe Calderon of Fox's center-right National Action Party, or PAN, and the PRI's Roberto Madrazo, who trails badly.

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Thailand Declares State of Emergency: Coup?

Wire services report Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has declared a state of emergency after tanks were spotted rolling through Bangkok and coup rumors swept the city.

Bush to ask world to support Mideast democracy

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush will challenge world leaders to do more to build democracy in the Middle East, when he speaks at the United Nations on Tuesday.
He will use a late-morning speech to the General Assembly to ask U.N. members for help in "encouraging the forces of moderation in this struggle against extremism" in the Middle East, national security adviser Stephen Hadley said on Monday.
Previewing the speech for reporters, Hadley said Bush will discuss how establishing democracies in the Middle East has "an important part to play to give the people in the region a vision of hope and opportunity and a better future."
"He will also ... emphasize the fact that countries need to find their way toward free and just societies in their own time, consistent with their own culture and traditions," Hadley said.
And Bush will "showcase" what the administration sees as positive results from its "freedom agenda," "the most remarkable being the processes of freedom and democracy going on in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon," according to Hadley

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Day / Topic / Reading / Seminar Leader

Sept 5: Civil Network Society - Boyd-Barrett (Stacey Haug)
Sept 7: Civil Network Society - Chapman (Gabriel Hernandez)

Sept 12: The United States - Putnam 1-4 (Jaclyn Franks/Breanne Fietz)
Sept 14: The United States - Putnam 7-9, (Catherine Helle) - Putnam 13 and Case Study Williams (Laura Godrey)

Sept 19: Mexico - Del Rio (Lauren Easterwood)
Sept 21: Case Study - Robinson (Nathan Leon)

Sept 26: Brazil/Spain - Encarnacio (Amanda Ozbolt/David Hays)
Sept 28: Case Study - Finquelievich (Fabiola Gil Rodriguez)

Oct 3: Germany/Russia - Howard (Matthew Davis)
Oct 5: Case Study - Matic (Gina Nardecchia)

Oct 10: China - Kluver (Catherine Slater)
Oct 12: Case Study - Weber* (Leslie Ketterman)

Oct 17: Singapore - Kluver and Weber (Cody Groves)
Oct 19: Case Study - Kluver and Weber (Susannah Cagle)

Oct 24: Philippines - Mulder (Whitney Brown)
Oct 26: Thailand - Mulder (Meredith Miller)

Oct 31: Indonesia - Mulder (Margaret Pickert) Nov 2: Case Study - Mulder (Marcie McSwane)

Nov 7: Middle East - Mowlana (Kathryn Wiggins) Nov 9: Case Study - Eikelman* (Brittany Bauerlein); Khatib (Amanda Luckey)


Note: * means that we are waiting on copies of the readings to arrive