Mérida, Yucatán -
YoSoy 132, the largely student-composed protest movement which is scarcely 60 days old, met over the weekend with other dissident groups to discuss the possibility of acts of national civil disobedience, including violence, to stop president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto from being sworn into office on Dec. 1.
The loosely structured organization was born in May when the presidential contest was in full swing. Despite representing itself as nonpartisan and focused on the "democratization of information," YoSoy 132 quickly exposed its strong opposition to Enrique Peña Nieto and its support for leftist Manuel López Obrador. Peña Nieto won the election on July 1 by a 6.62% margin, some 3.3 million votes according to Mexico's federal election authority. After a five month transition period the new PRI president is scheduled to take the nation's reins for the first time since 2000. YoSoy is one of several anti-EPN groups which met over the weekend to discuss plans for interference with the process.
Other organizations joining in the conference included the People's Front for the Defense of the Homeland, the Movement for National Rebirth and the Mexican Electricians Union, as well as other labor syndicates. All are strongly opposed to a return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party to Los Pinos, which it lost to former president Vicente Fox in 2000. PRI ruled Mexico for 71 years before that, some say with an iron fist. The party's history of authoritarian leadership troubled many voters in this year's election, but not enough to prevent its comfortable victory at the polls two weeks ago.
Plans discussed at the July 14 conference included closing down highways and public facilities, withholding tax payments, a nationwide boycott of 600 Soriana supermarkets (Mexico's largest chain), "critical mass" events in the Federal District which would bring all commerce and transportation to a virtual halt, and work stoppages or strikes designed to paralyze the national economy. There have been isolated calls for outright violence.
"A strange country, where the majority of intelligent people relied upon a bunch of fools"
The ultimate goal is to stop Enrique Peña Nieto from being sworn into office on Dec. 1, event organizers told the press on Saturday.
Neither López Obrador nor Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) representatives attended the meeting, which was heavily promoted by YoSoy 132 according to a CNN report. In recent public statements the defeated PRD candidate has emphatically rejected violence, as he moves forward with plans to challenge the election results.
July 21 - Mexico facing greater political crisis this year than in 2006
July 20 - López Obrador urges his supporters to steer clear of violence in any form
MGRR YoSoy 132 reports
Yo NO Soy's "summer of discontent"
Mexicans surveyed on YoSoy 132 attitudes
Mérida YoSoy 132 promises to turn up the heat
YoSoy 132 returns to Mérida streets, this time showing its true colors
YoSoy 132 protest arrives in Mérida
An obviously anti-López Obrador group calling itself We Don't Want Violence posted this YouTube montage on July 14, claiming that the candidate and his followers are advocates of violent revolution. The Milenio network, one of López Obrador's main targets since the election, in turn posted the video on its website July 15, without offering a clue as to for whom (or how many) the alleged organization speaks. A cheap shot by the network.
Which part of democracy do these people not understand?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they're following this advice, from two who literally wrote the book on the subject:
ReplyDelete"The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy."
Das Kommunistische Manifest (The Communist Manifesto), 1848, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.