MEXICO CITY — Legislators will vote next week on whether to allow Mexicans living abroad to cast ballots in the 2006 presidential election, after saying Friday that they had split on the issue with less than a week left to approve the bill.
The dispute threatens to again quash the voting rights of an estimated 11 million migrants, most in the U.S., and exposes the long-standing electoral fault lines in a country where one-tenth of the population has emigrated to find work.
The former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, voted Thursday in a lower-house committee to modify a Senate bill related to mail-in ballots; the changes call for polling places abroad.
But with the Thursday deadline for approving absentee voting approaching, other legislators suggested that some PRI lawmakers were trying to sink the initiative by returning the bill to the Senate, where the deadline would probably be missed.
“What the PRI is doing is practically sabotage, in the hopes [the bill] will wind up frozen in the Senate,” said Rep. Juan Jose Garcia Ochoa of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.
Absentee voting cited as success in Mexico
The most important accomplishment of Mexico's Congress has been its decision to allow absentee voting in next year's presidential election, a congressional leader said at an appearance in San Diego last week.
Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a Sonora congressman who served as governor of the border state from 1991 to 1997, said while the absentee voting law is "not the perfect system," it will allow all Mexicans to vote, no matter where they live.
"At last, we are together again," he said.
He said absentee voting, to be done by mail, may not have much effect
Mexico's expatriate voting plan a flop so far
A drive to get millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States to vote in the 2006 presidential election has fallen flat so far, with just 2,213 registered to vote, electoral officials said on Thursday.
The Mexican Congress approved an expatriate voting plan in June giving Mexican expatriates, who send billions of dollars home each year in remittances, the right to a voice in an election at home for the first time.
Activists predicted then that some 500,000 Mexican residents abroad would vote in next July's poll.
But nearly two months after
Mexico's Absentee Total Low
Fewer than 57,000 Mexican migrants have requested absentee ballots for the presidential election, officials said Thursday — a showing many say reflects serious flaws in the effort to include millions living abroad.
Migrants have argued that they received little information about the program. They also complained that a requirement forcing them to register for a voting card in Mexico negated the benefit of being able to cast a vote from outside the country.
Many of the estimated 4 million registered Mexican voters living abroad, mainly in the United States, are undocumented and don't want to return to
Mexico's Imsa to spin off units, list new company
Mexican conglomerate Imsa plans to spin off its plastics and aluminum units and list them in a new holding company on the local bourse, a restructuring that separates out its steel business.
Imsa said its plastics and aluminum subsidiaries, which make products like frames and ladders for the construction industry, will form a new company called G2, according to a prospectus published on Friday.
Shares of Imsa (IMSAUBC.MX: Quote, Profile, Research), which also processes steel for the auto and construction industries, soared on the split news. Shareholders of Imsa will receive one share of
Mexico presidential candidate alleges additional voting fraud
Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [Wikipedia profile], who officially lost the July 2 presidential election [JURIST report] by .6 percent of the vote, on Thursday presented new evidence for his claims of extensive fraud, showing reporters television ads by several consumer product companies allegedly containing subliminal messages supporting the campaign of election winner Felipe Calderon [Wikipedia profile], and accusing election officials - even some of his own poll workers - of manipulating vote counts. AP has more.
On Monday, Obrador filed 225 charges of election fraud [JURIST report] with Mexicos Federal
Europe and US still split over next Doha move
The US and European Union remain starkly divided over who must take the initiative to end the deadlock in the Doha round of world trade talks, as trade ministers approach their next opportunity to make progress at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland next weekend.
Comments by Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, and Rob Portman, US trade representative, have quashed hopes that there has been a significant change of heart since the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December left central issues unresolved.
Speaking on Monday in Berlin, Mr Mandelson insisted
México prepares for voting by holiday visitors
Mexican authorities are setting up special voter registration centers for Mexicans who live abroad but return to their home country for the holidays, as part of the first mass effort to distribute absentee ballots for presidential elections, officials said last Wednesday.
The 15 centers will be located mainly in border cities, as well as in three main urban centers -- México City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.
The Federal Electoral Institute has already opened the first two centers in the border city of Mexicali and in Guadalajara, and plan to have the others up and running soon.
The
Mexico sees growth slowing to 3.5 pct in 2007
Mexicos economic growth will slow to an insufficient rate of about 3.5 percent next year, the central bank said on Monday, adding that increased productivity and competitiveness were vital to job creation.
Guillermo Guemez, the central banks deputy governor and a voting member of its five-man monetary policy board, said a slowdown in the United States and the wider global economy would affect Mexicos growth under President-elect Felipe Calderon, who begins his six-year term on Dec. 1.
Mexican gross domestic product expanded 5.1 percent in the first half of this year and is
T-shirt said to be offensive to Mexico
The Urban Outfitters retail chain is once again upsetting some people with a T-shirt it's selling.
The shirt reads: "New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico."
An official with the Anti-Defamation League wants the retailer to stop selling the shirt -- because it suggests that "Mexico is a dirty place."
Urban Outfitters has run into similar controversy before. Two years ago, it stopped selling a game called "Ghettopoly" after black civil rights leaders protested. Last year, it stopped sales of a T-shirt that read, "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl," surrounded by dollar signs. The Anti-Defamation League objected to
Leaders of Mexico's PRI feud as presidential election season nears
A year before the presidential election, this nation's oldest, most powerful party headed toward a destructive split, resulting from the bitter enmity between its top leaders -- probable presidential nominee Roberto Madrazo and teachers union leader Elba Esther Gordillo.
Madrazo was to have resigned Tuesday as the Institutional Revolutionary Party's chief to campaign full time in next year's Mexican presidential election, but he delayed his move after the party's leadership council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask him to stay on until early August.
More: sfgate.com
