Mexican 'democracy', US-Style (Op-Ed)

The newly-elected Mexican president, Enrique Pena Nieto, has started his term by announcing a number of reforms, such as opening the energy sector to private investments. However, a court still has to rule on the legitimacy of the election results.

The best ‘democracy’ money can buy

Mexico’s presidential elections on July 1 were “officially won” by rich-kid candidate Enrique Peña Nieto with just over 38 per cent of the vote, thus bringing the PRI – Institutional Revolutionary Party – back to power.Loud cries of electoral fraud were heard immediately, notably from Andrés López Obrador, the left-of-center PRD – Democratic Revolution Party – candidate who came in second with 31.5 per cent of the vote.Last Thursday the PRD party filed a formal petition with Mexico’s electoral court demanding a vote recount, charging there was extensive vote buying and campaign overspending by the PRI as official winners.PRD party president Jesus Zambrano also delivered to the electoral court more than 20 boxes supposedly containing proof of vote-buying by PRI members. The court has until September to address these challenges, when it must validate the election and announce who will become Mexico’s new president next December.Clearly, López Obrador is not giving up and continues on the “campaign trail”, announcing that that next week he will unveil “a national plan in defense of democracy and Mexico’s dignity.”Associated Press mentioned rising demands to investigate the PRI’s distribution of thousands of pre-paid gift cards – with alleged involvement of the foreign exchange firm Monex – to voters before the election. Lopez Obrador also says some PRI state government officials passed funds to Peña Nieto’s election campaign.As part of the Global Power Master’s PsyWar efforts to benefit the PRI, Mexicans saw massive mainstream media support for Peña Nieto, including leveraging by pre-election pollsters “that were used as propaganda to confuse people.”  Prior to the elections, these polls consistently showed Peña Nieto as front-runner, often saying he was leading by double-digits over Lopez Obrador, but when the real vote counts started coming in, he ended up just having an alleged six-point lead over Lopez Obrador, who stated that “in a free election the majority of those citizens would not have voted for Enrique Peña Nieto.”Even the UN funded watchdog group Civic Alliance said this vote was “neither a clean nor fair election." One of its directors, Eduardo Huchim – also a former Federal Electoral Institute official – said that this was "perhaps the biggest operation of vote-buying and coercion in the country's history."

‘Let’s go to my backyard…’

The importance of these elections goes far beyond Mexico’s borders, especially into the rest of the Latin American countries south of the Rio Bravo. As a new wave of US imperial power over the Americas marches southwards into its “backyard”, the very first patch of land on its doorstep is Mexico, where US influence has always been a determining factor.Every time Mexico holds an election, US pressure – normally in the form of money power & money sloshing either through its corporate overworld, its embassy, or through a myriad of money-funneling channels – ensures that Mexican voters will always chose USA’s favorite candidate.In fact, Mexico is a high profile example of what has, at one time or another, occurred in every Latin American country over the past half century. As Hillary Clinton said in March 2011 when visiting Egypt, it’s all about “ensuring…models for the kind of democracy that we want to see," which is not real democracy, but rather mechanical vote-counting exercises, fully controlled by Money Power through direct campaign funding, global media press coverage, polls, and of course grand show-time campaign circuses.They’ve been so good at it in Mexico, that Peña Nieto’s PRI party held on to power during an uninterrupted 71 years from 1928 to 2000, which kept Mexico nicely aligned to its Elder Brethren to the North. In a recent article, the Rockefeller-led “Americas Society” described this as “the PRI’s perfect dictatorship”. No wonder former PRI presidents like Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo are members of the Rockefeller-Rothschild Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations global geopolitical planning centers.When, in 2000, the PRI eased its stronghold over Mexico’s “democracy” and ceded its place to the PAN – National Action Party – the incoming president was also a “FOUS” (Friend Of US): Vicente Fox, a former Coca-Cola Mexico CEO.Today, outgoing PAN president Felipe Calderon also kept very, very much aligned to US interests, however PAN came in third in the election to a great extent because it failed to control the extreme narco-violence that has left almost 60,000 Mexicans dead over the past five years, not to speak of the injured, for-life addicts, and destroyed livelihoods.Yet even PAN party’s president Gustavo Madero made serious charges, saying Peña Nieto used all sorts of dirty tricks to win the election.    

God help Mexico…

A popular pun about the times when the Catholic Church was persecuted by secular governments in Mexico, especially from 1926 to 1934, goes something like this: “Poor Mexico: so very far from God and so very close to the United States.”Well, 80 years of history has shown that whilst Mexico’s row with the Catholic Church has been amicably resolved, trouble “Made in USA” continues to be dumped on Mexico increasing its internal weakness and turmoil.NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Area – ushered in under PRI administrations of the ’90s brought in a “new order” south of the border: slave labor exploitation by American corporations resulting in ever-higher corporate profits and increased US unemployment.This is because US “democracy” insists that borders should be completely free for US corporations and banks to go in and out of Mexico as they please, but let every Mexican citizen know: if you cross the border northwards you will be shot at!Now the US wants to deepen its “free trade” strategies where, again, Mexico is its key launching pad into the region. Amongst its many objectives: neutralizing non-US aligned trade blocs like ALBA and Mercosur. Who can be more trusted to do that than the PRI?So, come September, Mexico’s electoral court had better come up with the “right” decision because if it were to make the “wrong” decision, then the US will find it hard to tolerate a socialist president coming to power on its backyard border. If – God forbid! – that were to happen, then Mexico will be in for a heavy bout of foreign-engineered “Latin American Spring” insurrection.Сlearly, the Mexican election results are of great importance not just to Mexicans.

Adrian Salbuchi for RT

Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.ar