News Summary for July 1st, 2009

++ President Felipe Calderón underscored the importance of all Mexicans taking part in elections on July 5, since their votes will set the nation’s agenda, he said. (Comment: Will we set the agenda if the parties don´t care what we think? Voting should be the way to pressure change.. This has not happened until now…What is the difference now? Don´t get me wrong I think everyone should go out and vote..legally…But there has to be more ways to make sure congress, governors and mayors are more accountable..)

++ The Businesses Coordinating Council launched a campaign to get the vote out, through two spots on the Internet. José Woldenberg, former IFE chairman, said spots – whose broadcast was sponsored by the electoral institute --- had lowered the level of public debate about elections. (Comment: The electoral reform has lowered the debate, which is the bottom line… Now what is going to happen for the 2012 elections? )

++ Current IFE chief Leonardo Valdés Zurita said null or blank votes have increased in recent years… He said that elections in 1997 saw 844,000 null votes and that figure grew to more than a million in 2006. (Comment: Since the presiding magister at the Federal Tribunal already warned that there will be 70% abstention rate... Is he basically warning what could happen on Sunday?.... By the way a survey by GEA-ISA pollster found an expected 39 percent turnout rate on Sunday, two percent annulled votes and failure to go to the polls by 59 percent of voters. Off the record, a well-known pollster told me that he believed that there would be a 70% rate…)

++ The head of the Michoacán Congress Governance Committee Enrique Bautista, said the three mayors freed on Monday after having been arrested by the Attorney General’s Office will be able to resume their jobs with no need for additional paperwork… Nonetheless, the state government said all officials detained on charges of alleged links to drug traffickers had been dismissed.

++ Chief Supreme Court justice Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia met with the parents of some of the 48 children killed in the fire in the ABC day care center in Hermosillo, Sonora... They requested that the nation’s top court investigate possible human rights violations …


++ The Finance Secretariat said the nation’s public finances reported a 10-billion-peso deficit from January to May… This was due to falling tax and oil revenues… (Comment: How bad is it going to get?)