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I found this on a world-socialist message
board
-Billy Novotny
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MEXICO : THE PARTY'S OVER
Neighbor out of control
[ I think it would be most interesting
and relevant
if you were to do a story on the rampant corruption in
mexican politics today] To wit :
The PRI (Revolutionary
Institutional Party) which
has been in power for seventy years, has
finally
broken the camel's back : FOBAPROA, a bank bailout
scheme
pegged at over 150,OOO,OOO,OOO pesos (15
billion dollars) will be
socked to taxpayers while
letting off (rewarding, actually) a bunch of
crooked
bankers and their political cronies. Re-named IPAB
to
remove the stench, the program purports to guarantee
depositors' monies
while it really passes on bad debts
involving such luminaries as
Eduardo Bours, Olegario
Vazquez Rana (notorious bagman for ex-president
Luis
Echeverria), and the Ballesteros family, according to
feisty
congresswoman Dolores Padierna of the PRD.
The list also includes such
highly regarded businessmen
as Carlos Slim (ranked by Forbes as the
richest man in
Mexico with 8 billion dollars and widely considered a
front man for ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari)
and bank
owners galore.
But Slim is just one of them. Gerardo de Prevoisin,
ex-CEO of both Aeromexicoand Mexicana airlines has just
been
extradited from Switzerland on charges of several
million dollars
which, he claims, were actually handed over
to the PRI for Ernesto
Zedillo's political campaign in 1994,
after the official Party
candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio,
was assasinated in Baja California in
a crime that has yet
to be cleared up.
The incredible wealth
amassed by the Hank Gonzalez
family is reputed to surpass even Slim's
vast fortune;
several Hank Gonzalez/Hank Rhon companies
have
benefited from the write-offs that FOBAPROA is trying to
legitimize.
All U.S. citizens should consider the following
:
(a) whatever happens in Mexico is bound
to affect you in the
US sooner or later;
(b) there are about - I believe - 30 million
Hispanics
now living in the US - 60% of them mexicans.
The more
you probe, the more incredible the level of
corruption becomes.
Mansions, Hotel Chains, Banks,
Private 727's, etc., etc.
This
community will be doing all Mexicans a favor
by disseminating the PRI's
rampant corruption and
by pressing for permission for all Mexican
citizens
residing in the U.S. to be able to vote legally in
Mexico's
upcoming presidential elections on July 2,
2000. This initiative has
been blocked by a frightened
PRI from the very outset. Thus far it has
been
unappealable.
But nothing upsets the PRI more than having
its image
abroad tarnished by scandal. The party's rapacity and
greed exceed all bounds of morality and, indeed, borders
on the
obscene when one considers that, in contrast to
their filthy rich
so-called representatives, more than half
of the country's 90+ million
people live in grinding poverty,
and that roughly 50% of the wretchedly
poor live below
subsistence levels by any standards one cares to apply.
The contrast is so marked that PRI politicians themselves
are
admitting that something must be done about such disparity.
Hence the
PRI has just come out with an advertising slogan touting the
fact that
they're finally going to change:
The New PRI - closer to you <it
rhymes catchily in Spanish>.
El nuevo PRI - mas cerca de
ti.
I urge this community to support all those who oppose
the
PRI and to spread the word on the rampant corruption south
of
the border.
It may do us some harm, from a tourism point of view,
but I'm sure that in the long term, these actions are necessary
and, ultimately, a means of applying pressure for change to the
group of thieving cynics that are (still) running the PRI.
President Zedillo, of humble origins, is perceived to be
basically honest personally, but in acceding to and
implementing
the FOBAPROA/IPAB bailout at the
expense of mostly poor taxpayers, he
is doing the
crooks a great favor and a great disservice to future
generations of mexicans who will have to bear the
burden of a debt
so staggering that it can only continue
to drag down Mexico's poor
until they disappear from sight -
or explode.
Mexico City,
October 21, 1999
Re-posted in this community forum on April 13,
2000
by
Dino Pumeso
dinopumeso@go.com |
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