Mexico Opposition to Dominate Key Finance Committees

Reuters, 9/30/09
MEXICO CITY, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Mexico’s leading opposition party will have the most lawmakers on the budget and finance committees in the lower house of Congress, both key to President Felipe Calderon’s push to reform the tax system.
The center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will chair the budget committee, and it will [...]

Deputies Approve 44 Legislative Committees (In Spanish)

em>El Universal, 9/30/09
Mexico’s congressional deputies today unanimously approved the appointments to the 44 legislative committees within the National Chamber of Deputies, with the exception of the committee on the Federal District which was conceded to the PAN.
The PRD voted against assigning the Federal District committee to the PAN, and in the words of the PRD [...]

PAN and PRD Set Congressional Leadership

Zemi Communications, 8/17/2009
The PAN chose Josefina Vázquez Mota as the party’s leader in the new Chamber of Deputies, over former Government Secretary Francisco Ramírez Acuña, while the PRD selected Alejandro Encinas as its leader. The second move was a surprise, since AMLO-protégé Encinas lost a bitter PRD leadership contest to Jesús Ortega last year. [...]

Poll: Mixed Views on Election ‘Loser’

Zemi Communications, 8/17/2009
A new Mitofsky survey shows that two-third of those surveyed saw, not surprisingly, the PRI as the winner of the July 5 elections. Views of which party was the principal loser were divided. Priistas and independents saw the PRD as the big loser in the election, followed by the PAN. Panistas, on the [...]

Mexico’s 2009 Midterm Elections and Future Energy Reform

George Baker, Mexidata.info, 7/13/2009
In Mexico’s political system the mechanism of the popular vote has a place, but that place is typically reserved for junior persons who merely aspire to a political career. The senators and federal deputies who will become the leaders of the key committees will be those who take their seats by a [...]

Mexico Faces ‘Unsustainable’ Gap, Morgan Stanley Says

Valerie Rota, Bloomberg, 7/13/2009
Mexico’s fiscal accounts may be heading toward “unsustainable deficits” as a decline in oil production cuts government revenue, according to Morgan Stanley.
Mexico may need to curb spending growth to keep the deficit in check should the government fail to push through changes to tax laws that buoy revenue, Morgan Stanley analysts Luis [...]

Op-Ed: Mexico, a Strategic Hub in the Americas Scheme of Things

LA Times, 7/13/2009
While Mexico’s opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, claimed victory and moved towards aspirations of a presidential victory in 2012, the Mexican internal political struggle must come to grips with Latin America’s revolving cognitive dissonance.
The pivotal role of Mexico as merely a spoke in a whirlwind of turmoil contiguous to the United States, [...]

Mexico’s Midterm Elections: Winners and Losers

Andrew Selee and Katie Putnam, Mexico Institute, 7/10/2009
Starting now: A discussion on Mexico’s Midterm Elections and the Future of Democracy with José Antonio Crespo and Jeffrey Weldon. The event will be webcast live from 12-2pm at wilsoncenter.org/mexico.

On July 5, Mexicans elected the five hundred members of the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of Congress), [...]

2009 Elections: Outlook and Results (In Spanish)

Fundacion IDEA, 7/10/2009
On the 5th of July Mexico celebrated the conclusion of another midterm election that was distinguished not only by the return to power of the PRI, but by the large percentage of voter turnout.
The Preliminary Electoral Results Program (PREP) finished counting ballots on the 6th of July at 8:00 p.m. with information [...]

Editorial: A Warning Sign from Mexico’s Elections

LA Times, 7/8/2009
It’s the economy, estupidoestupido. And the drug violence, lack of security and failure to end impunity for well-connected lawbreakers. It’s a legacy of corruption.
For all those reasons, Mexico’s ruling National Action Party took a hammering in this week’s midterm elections from frustrated voters, many of whom turned back to the Institutional Revolutionary [...]