Confrontation Over National Referendum on Oil Privatization in Mexico

Abayomi Azikiwe, PANW Editor, Outside the Mexican Consulate in Downtown Detroit on October 31, 2006 (Photo By Fred David)
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire Photo File

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Confrontation Over National Referendum on Oil Privatization Plan Comes to a Head

By ALAN BENJAMIN

I just returned from Mexico City, where I participated in a series of meetings to promote the campaign in defense of Mexico's oil resources against the privatization "reform" proposals presented to the Mexican Congress last April 8 by Felipe Calderón, the illegitimate "president" of Mexico who was imposed by fraud with the open assistance of George W. Bush and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

The political situation in Mexico is full of great promise for all advocates of social change: A powerful movement in the streets is growing to challenge the privatizers of all political stripes. At the same time, the situation is fraught with great challenges and dangers.

The National Movement in Defense of Oil (Movimiento Nacional en Defensa del Petróleo, or MNDP) -- which is led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the legitimate president of Mexico, and by Claudia Sheinbaum, minister of energy and natural resources of the "legitimate government" -- formally presented a resolution to the Mexican Congress on June 3 calling on the Congress to organize a Nationwide Referendum to let the people vote on the six privatization planks in the Calderón-Bush energy "reform" plan.

The PRI-PAN majority in the Congress, through its spokespersons, announced that such a proposal is unconstitutional -- which is blatantly false, as Article 26, Section 3, and Article 49 clearly allow for holding such referendums. Leaders of the PRI and the PAN also accused the promoters of the national referendum -- and López Obrador in particular -- of "fomenting instability, violence and chaos" across Mexico.

In addition, both Calderón and Jesus Reyes Heroles, the current director of Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil corporation, have insisted that a referendum is out of the question as their "reform" plan is too "complicated" for the Mexican people to be able to understand.

Such accusations have not prevented defenders of Mexico's oil resources from moving forward.

In early June, a wing of López Obrador supporters in the PRD, all of them mayors, announced that in the cities and villages under their administration, they will go ahead and convene referendums on the energy "reform" plan. Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of Mexico City (which holds about 10% of the country's population and is its nerve center), announced that he would hold a referendum on July 27.

Ebrard's announcement was met with a firestorm of protests and declarations by top-level Calderón government officials, who warned him not to go ahead with this referendum. Ebrard was threatened with violating Mexico's Constitution, and some official spokespersons hinted that he might face impeachment proceedings (or desafüero) were he to go forward with this proposal.

Then on June 5, López Obrador announced publicly that no matter what is decided in the Congress, and no matter what happens with the municipalities where local referendums are being organized through the PRD-led city administrations, the MNDP will go forward and hold a national referendum in all the country's remaining 2,500 electoral districts. "The people are sovereign, the people must decide," López Obrador insisted. Two days later, López Obrador announced that this second phase of the referendum (or Consulta Popular, as it is being called), will be held on Aug. 7.

MNDP coordinator Claudia Sheinbaum then announced that a huge June 29 assembly of the MNDP will be held in the downtown plaza in Mexico City, the Zócalo, at which all the plans for organizing this Aug. 7 nationwide referendum will be announced.

New Political Situation

The decision by the legitimate government of Mexico and the mass MNDP to go ahead with this referendum has created a new political situation in Mexico.

Sectors of the PRI and PAN are saying that this decision by López Obrador is tantamount to treason. Suddenly a few conservative newspaper columnists are "discovering" that the MNDP could very well be financed by the drug cartel -- which is a total fabrication, culled directly from the CIA disinformation manuals.

But this is not a toothless accusation. Already six states in northern Mexico are being militarized and essentially occupied by the Army and special forces. New drug dealers are being "discovered" left and right -- scapegoats for the regime, as everyone knows that it's the army and the local, state and federal politicians (many with strong links to politicians and banks in the United States) who are the main drug-dealers.

The "war on drugs" is now conveniently being launched under the new Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) to militarize the country and sow fear and terror among the population, and to dislocate this movement of national resistance that is growing by leaps and bounds. At the same time, guerrilla armies that no one ever heard of are emerging to further sow division and confusion. In Mexico, there is a long history of government-funded "guerrilla" groups that arise when true mass movements are taking foot, to split the movement and dislocate it.

The emergence of new "guerrilla forces" in turn gives the government the pretext to further militarize the country, suspend democratic rights (such as the right to assemble ... or place a voting booth of the "legitimate government" in your neighborhood or school) and essentially sow chaos, which is then blamed on the resistance movement: a neat and carefully planned scheme to blame the victim.

This new situation is also deepening the public fissures within the PRD, the party of which López Obrador is a member.

The PRD formally supports the national referendum proposal by López Obrador, but at its June 1 national leadership meeting, the party endorsed a proposal by PRD leader Acosta Naranjo to form a bloc with the PRI, sectors of the PAN, and the Green Party of Mexico (which is a center-rightwing party closely allied to the PAN and PRI) with the purpose of submitting an "alternative energy reform plan" that fundamentally accepts the privatization tenets of the Calderón-Bush plan and simply delays the introduction of some of the privatization mechanisms in certain sectors of the industry.

(López Obrador, for his part, has said that under no circumstances will he accept a "better" privatization plan. The whole government "reform" plan must be scrapped, he has stated time and again.}

PRD founder Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas insists that he supports the national referendum proposed by López Obrador, but his statements make it clear that for him this referendum is only a popular consultation and that the final and determining vote will be cast by the Congress once the people have been "consulted."

For Cárdenas, the "Consulta Nacional" is not a binding referendum; rather, as he told La Jornada on June 12, it is a means to pressure the Congress into accepting a new energy "reform" plan that is different from and better than the one submitted by Felipe Calderón.

At the same time, a whole layer of the Chuchos, a wing of the party led by Jesus (or "Chucho") García, are saying that López Obrador does not speak for them, that he is on an "ego trip" to prepare his own election campaign in 2012, that he is a feudal lord (or cacique) and that he has lost his mind.

These statements, all baseless, are giving ammunition to sectors of the ruling class and government-controlled media that are set on pitting López Obrador against his own PRD parliamentary fraction. "López Obrador does not trust his own people in the Congress," they write. "If he did, he would trust their vote in the Congress." And they are warning of something far more serious.

They are saying that López Obrador's decision could create a situation where López Obrador and the MNDP might very well decide not to accept whatever vote is taken by the Mexican Congress, even if it's a "better privatization plan," thereby creating an "illegal situation of dual power" in the country that would destabilize Mexico, its economy and the entire global economy.

Ruling-class pundits always raise the specter of illegality and chaos when a people rises up to challenge the status quo and to speak in their own name.

Mass Movement in the Streets

These counter-posed positions have deepened the political crisis in the PRD -- a crisis that came to the fore publicly in the aftermath of the 2006 presidential election, when the PRD governors recognized the illegitimate Calderón government and then went on to implement in their own states most of the Calderón-Bush "reforms." These governors are supported by the majority of the PRD's parliamentary wing: the Chuchos.

Internal leadership elections were held in the PRD four months ago. The results are still contested, as the Chuchos stacked the votes with the support of PRI-infiltrated members -- and the Encinas-López Obrador wing denounced them publicly. To avoid a split in the party, they have deferred holding new internal elections. But for all practical purposes, the party has already split.

This was reflected in the situation in the Congress in early April, just before Calderón submitted his proposals for a vote of the Congress.

At that time, Claudia Sheinbaum, coordinator of the MNDP, announced that she and the resistance movement had learned from reliable sources that the government would be submitting its "reform" proposals to the Congress some time during the first or second weeks of April. Sheinbaum issued a statement on behalf of the MNDP in which she said that the movement's Brigadistas would surround the Congress to prevent the vote.

Ruth Zavaleta, the PRD's parliamentary fraction leader and also current president of the National Assembly, announced publicly that she would arrest the Brigadistas and anyone else who would dare disrupt the vote in the Congress.

Zavaleta had her marching orders to make sure the vote in support of the energy "reforms" were fast-tracked in the Congress on April 8, when they were submitted. (We have since learned from the Mexican press that Calderón had privately told the CEO of Repsol, the Spanish oil conglomerate that stands to get a big piece of the Mexican oil pie, that all the votes had been lined up in the Congress and that the reform would be approved through the fast-track procedure on April 8.)

But then the movement intervened and disrupted their best-laid plans. A wing of the PRD in the Congress close to López Obrador -- with the backing of hundreds of thousands of Brigadistas (mostly women) in the streets -- occupied the rostrums of both houses of Congress, unfurled their "Shut Down" banners, and essentially prevented the fast-tracking of the vote with their 18-day occupation of the Congress. It was impossible politically for Zavaleta or for anyone else to make any arrests.

This forced a national discussion in the Congress that has produced 10 debates where the López Obrador forces have absolutely demolished the Calderón supporters. As much as the mainstream press may wish to hide this terrible PR defeat, they cannot do it.

Although the debates have been covered only on for-pay TV stations, the López Obrador forces have made DVDs, which are up on YouTube and are selling for just a few pesos like hot potatoes all across Mexico. They are also distributing a very popular comic book by a well-known cartoonist, El Fisgón, that explains in very simple but accurate terms the exact character of the Calderón-Bush reforms.

The occupation of the Congress also gave the MNDP time to organize a movement of Brigadistas and Defense Committees in every town and village in the country to explain the real nature of the privatization plan, using the faux pas and contradictions of the Calderón people.

(For example, Calderón and his U.S. PR team have insisted vehemently that this is not a privatization plan, but is only aimed at modernizing the system. But Calderón's energy minister, Georgina Kessel, acknowledged in a debate that the reform involved the introduction of private capital, stating, "I don't see how they can oppose this, even in China they are introducing private capital to privatize and upgrade their state industries.")

What has been decisive is the creation of an independent mass movement in the streets. To the great chagrin of the Mexican ruling class and the PRD's conservative wing, López Obrador has created his own movement independent of the PRD and outside the PRD: the National Democratic Convention (CND), which today has taken the form of the National Movement in Defense of Oil.

Meanwhile, López Obrador has continued his tour of the country. He was in Baja California on June 5-7, before traveling to Zacatecas. His rallies are huge everywhere he goes. Not just big, but huge.

And López Obrador's speeches have become more confident and bold. In Ensenada, Baja California, for example, he stated publicly that Calderón should just pick up his marbles and call it quits. He said:

"Calderón has failed in his attempt to privatize Mexico's oil resources. The Mexican people are not 'ignorant,' as Calderón and Reyes Heroles [of Pemex] would have us believe. They are an intelligent and dignified people who can see that their resources are about to be stolen, and who are not going to stand by and allow it to happen. ...

"Calderón should contact his paymasters in the United States and Spain [Calderón was about to embark on a trip to Spain] to tell them that he has failed in his attempt to do what they entrusted him to do when they financed the massive fraud that brought him to power in July 2006 -- that is, he has failed, and will continue fail, of this we have no doubt, in his effort to turn over our oil resources to the U.S. and other transnational oil corporations."

And López Obrador and the MNDP are not alone. On June 8, more than 600 delegates representing 200 unions, community and peasants organizing comprising the Diálogo Nacional met in Mexico City and voted to support the national referendum proposed by López Obrador.

Fernando Amezcua, international relations director of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) and convener of the meeting, got a standing ovation from the delegates when he urged the assembly of Dialógo Nacional to support the nationwide referendum, oppose the privatization of Pemex and of all state enterprises and services (including the electricity sector), and also call for the repeal of the counter-reform of the public healthcare plan of the public-sector workers, or ISSSTE.

These unionists and activists pledged to place their union halls all across the country and their resources at the service of organizing this national referendum. They understand that if this Calderón-Bush energy "reform" passes, another deadly Calderón-Bush counter-reform is likely to go through as well -- that is, the complete overhaul of Mexico's federal labor laws, which are viewed as too lenient toward unions as they allow the right to strike. Taft-Hartley on steroids is what's in store for them if this energy "reform" is not defeated.

The Mexican people have said, "Enough is Enough!" and "Ni un Paso Atrás! [not one step backward].

Just about everyone with whom I spoke said they will do whatever is necessary to stop this "energy" reform package from going through. "This is our line in the sand," they said. "We are doing this for our children and grand-children; if the American oil companies are allowed to take back Pemex, our children will have no future."

The Mexican people, who are fighting for their resources and their sovereignty, deserve the unconditional support of all labor and human rights activists in the United States and the world over.
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Alan Benjamin is the editor of The Organizer newspaper. A sample copy of The Organizer can be ordered by contacting the email and/or other addresses listed above.
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