Felipe Calderon: the Enemy Inside by Carlos Fazio

Mexico, Feb 3 (Prensa Latina) The hundredth day of government still to come, Felipe Calderon has not only had to face his political adversaries but also the “friendly fire” from within his own Partido Accion Nacional (PAN).

It is even said that his worst enemy, the most aggressive and unscrupulous is the PAN, whose president Manuel Espino is a furious nationalist who also leads the Christian Democrat Organization of America, of ultraright tendency promoted by ex Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar and his Partido Popular.

Last December, US scholar Emmanuel Wallerstein predicted that Mexico would live a “period of conflict” of two to three years and foresaw, quoting subcommandant Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, the possibility of a rebellion or civil war.

After several months of political turbulence in the framework of pacific civil resistance opposed to electoral fraud that named Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as “legitimate president” of Mexicans and after the acts of state violence in Oaxaca which left 20 dead, everything indicated a hot January in Mexico.

However, president Calderon himself said after 47 days in his post (January 17) there is a “more responsible” political leadership, that the postelectoral crisis was left behind and the environment of “generalized anxiety” had been overcome. He even said he did not worry about being a “president under siege.”

Under the circumstances, the neozapatistas of the EZLN or the lopezobradorism give signs of opposition vitality and the rebellion represented by the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) has been suffocated in blood and fire. Even after deporting about 15 capos of the organized crime to the United States, the country did not catch fire.

Notwithstanding, Calderon is a president under siege. The domestic enemy of the executive is in PAN, the old confessional party linked to the conservative hierarchy of the Catholic church that is pestering him.

The fight between the president and his party is obvious. Part of a personal confrontation between Calderon and Espino, that began in the times when Accion Nacional had to name a candidate for the presidency of the Republic.

The war of factions continued into the postelectoral period when amidst the harassment by lopezobradorists who described him as “illegal president”, Calderon turned to his party for a “healthy approach” before Espino’s indifference who travelled to Spain with the PAN executive committee in full.

For a long time now PAN is no longer innocent and abandoned the nature of party eternally in opposition that wanted to “democratize” Mexico, controlled for many years by PRI regimes. The PAN is not excluded from internal struggles for power, it has also become corrupt and divided.

The old mob system represented by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional in his decomposing stage, is already evident in PAN. In January, for example, a local PAN deputy was executed in the state of Guerrero and investigations show as prime suspect the husband of the substituting deputy as part of an inter-party conspiracy tainted by corruption and blackmail.

The links of PAN members with organized crime are not new. The former governor of Morelos, Sergio Estrada Cajigal, was subjected to a political trial in his state, accused of corruption and alleged links with the drug barons. In May, 2005, former PAN deputy Saul Rubio was executed in Sinaloa, after becoming infamous for having attended the funeral of an assistant to Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, chief of the local drug cartel and presently at large.

Manuel Gómez Morín, founder of PAN in 1939, had advised on the challenge to win power without losing the party, its ideology and principles. For many years, the old party had publicly appeared as homogenous, serious and capable of airing its differences in a civilized way.

With the assumption of power, however, personal ambitions shot off and some are burning their bread. Or at least, PAN is sinking.

For more details in the state of Aguascalientes, one of the most significant for Accion Nacional, a rebellion exploded against PAN governor Luis Reynoso, supported by his predecessor Felipe Gonzalez and okayed by Espino. PAN deputies demand the governor to be ousted.

Executions, murders, dimissions, rebellions and the shadow of a “minimato” (expression from the history of Mexico and opposed to “maximato” applied by president Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-28), who extended his power behind the throne during the term of his successor Pascual Ortiz Rubio.

Now there is a “foxization” of the white and blue party, foreboding difficult times for Calderon and for Mexico. God help us!

(*) The author is collaborator for Prensa Latina.