MEXICO: PRI Vote Buying Clouds Sunday's Elections; Demand For Nullification Grows.

LATIMES / T. Wilkinson

In populous Mexico state, political parties opposed to the out of power PRI charge that widespread vote buying is going on...and demand that Sunday's upcoming elections be result thrown out.


The PRI has been handing out rice, paint, cement and even gym memberships and debit cards there.


 But payola is not necessarily illegal... unless state money or goods are involved.


"Accepting this would be signing a blank check for 2012," said Manuel Camacho Solis, the former mayor of Mexico City. "The problem isn't the PRI winning, it's that the old PRI is returning with all the practices of an autocratic regime."


There are precedents for elections to be nullified.

MEXICO: 15 June UPDATE: Ex-Tijuana Mayor Hank Rhon Released... Again.

LINK CHANGE / LATIMES

A federal judge released ex-Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon from federal prison because officials lacked evidence for illegal weapons charges.

He was then taken in and held without charges by the state...for questioning about homicides linked to 2 of his guns.

But finally... he was released by a judge... who tossed out weapons charges...and Hank Rhon returned to his estate.

"This has been a disaster for the federal government," said an analyst. "What will happen is that nothing will happen. Here, everyone remains untouchable."

Hank Rhon is a prominent member of the PRI...which wants to regain the presidency next year.
Rumors of his ties to narcos have circulated for years but many suspect the government's timing.

MEXICO: 9 June UPDATE: Billionaire Ex-Tijuana Mayor Rhon...Facing Weapons Charges In Baja.

LINK CHANGE / LATIMES

   Jorge Hank Rhon, 55, ex-mayor of Tijuana and one of Mexico's richest men... who was detained along with 10 bodyguards...after a raid uncovered 88 guns and more than 9,000 rounds of ammunition in his home...has returned to a Baja jail...facing federal weapons charges.
 Prosecutors said only 10 of the seized weapons were licensed. 
 He could get up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of gun law violations.

 Rhon was Tijuana mayor from 2004 to 2007.
 He is a prominent member of the opposition PRI party...and a possible candidate for the state of Baja California governorship in 2013.

MEXICO: Mixed Election Results For Calderon And Opposition PRI.

BLOOM/      Official results show that the PRI did not garner as many victories as expected while President Calderon's PAN party and allies took some governorships held by the PRI. The PRI held on to 6 states and retook Zacatecas, Tlaxcala and Aguascalientes. But the PAN and its allies won 3 states previously held by PRI, including Oaxaca, long controlled by the PRI, Puebla and Sinaloa, the home state of many drug thugs. “The PRI took it on the chin,”said professor George Grayson. The states that the PAN alliance won are larger than the states it lost, helping the PAN increase the total population it governs by more than 30%. (Foto of generic election workers)

MEXICO: Combining Parties In Oaxaca To Defeat The Dominant PRI.

NYTIMES/       An inside politics story about how the divergent parties on the left and right in Oaxaca state are trying to unite to defeat the long dominant party there, the PRI and its outgoing, much-detested leader, Ulysses Ruiz.
NYTIMES: "To the party strategists in Mexico City, a win by Mr. Cué in Oaxaca will prove that a coalition is the best way to stop a return to the presidency by the PRI in the 2012 election."

MEXICO: Assassination Of Leading Political Candidate Shocks Nation.

AP/ MIAMI HERALD/     In a nation besieged daily by news of brutal violence, the report that Rodolfo Torre Cantu, 46, the leading gubernatorial candidate in the U.S. border state of Tamaulipas was assassinated a week before an election, along with at least four of his staff on a rural highways, has Mexico reeling. President Felipe Calderon immediately went on TV  to condemn the brazen attack. “This was an act not only against a candidate of a political party but against democratic institutions, and it requires a united and firm response from all those who work for democracy,” he declared. Torre, a PRI candidate, was leading in recent polls by 20%. Torre's murder is the highest-profile case of political violence since 1994, when a presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated. “What organized crime wants is that we stay in our houses, that we are afraid, and they are saying, ‘We want to control the country,’” said Xóchitl Gálvez, a candidate for governor in Hidalgo State. She urged voters to vote to show that the people, not criminals, still rule. Officials said elections would be held as scheduled.

MEXICO: PAN And PRD Propose A Union Against PRI Governors.

LATIMES/ A persistent rumor is circulating that Calderon's conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) may join together in an election year alliance to defeat PRI governors in 12 of Mexico's 31 states, especially Durango, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Puebla.

Global Political Cartoons.

PRI/"THE WORLD"/

A selection of editorial cartoons from around the world commenting on Obama and Afganistan, Israeli settlements, Iran's nukes, China's 60th anniversary, Roman Polanski's arrest and swine flu.

Mexico's PRI Returns.

A "perverse nostalgia for the PRI’s style of corruption" returns.