Mexican villagers put crime suspects on trial

Some 500 residents of various districts of the western state of Guerrero began on 31 January their own trial of over 50 suspects held in preceding weeks for alleged criminal activities in the surrounding Costa Chica sector, the review Proceso reported. The trial, which state authorities have more or less denounced as illegal, was organized by "community authorities" of the ethnic population of the districts of Florencio Villarreal, Ayutla de los Libres, Tecoanapa and San Marcos, and fruit of a self-defence movement that emerged in early January as residents armed themselves to fight rampant crime. About 250 people attending the first session were armed. They listened to the presentation of the purported defendants in a three-hour event held in hills outside the town of Ayutla; a second session was to be held on 22 February in the district of Tecoanapa, Proceso reported. The gathering also heard members of the Community Police explain the recent history of popular mobilization locally; a founder of the Community Police the priest Mario Campos Hernández, explained that the people was restoring order where the state had failed. He alluded to suspected collusion between some authorities and criminals, which was presented as a cause of this virtual uprising. The head of the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG) Bruno Plácido Valerio separately denied that state authorities had retaken control of the district of Ayutla and insisted locals would not disarm until they had eliminated crime locally. It is by no means exceptional in Mexico to suspect collusion between authorities and criminals. Most recently the former mayoress of Lerdo in the northern state of Durango placed a notice in a daily accusing a local leader of her party - the conservative National Action Party (PAN) - of associating with criminals. Maria del Rosario Castro Lozano published her charges in El Sol de Durango against the PAN coordinator in Lerdo, Raúl Villegas Morales. She declared she informed the party's National Executive Committee of this in October 2012 but was ignored, Proceso reported on 30 January. How she asked can "we demand that the...governor" of Durango to "clean the state of traffickers when the head of...the PAN in Lerdo has links?"

Mexican parties sign Pact to facilitate reforms

Mexico's three main political parties signed the Pact for Mexico (Pacto por México) on 2 December, pledging to collaborate on legislative initatives and forward the agenda of structural and economic reforms touted by the new President Enrique Peña Nieto, Reuters reported. In this pact, the parties would negotiate initiatives before voting and consult with sectors in society when formulating legislation. "We have to talk to build consensus...as politicians we need to turn coincidences into a basis for reaching essential agreements," Peña Nieto said during the signature ceremony in Chapultepec Castle, the former imperial and presidential residence in Mexico City. The agency observed that fundamental reforms were suspended in Mexico in recent years as parties refused to pay the political cost of unpopular initiatives proposed by the conservative governments that ruled Mexico in 2000-2012; this halted cross-party collaboration in parliament. Mexico's interior minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong cited the first initiatives to be discussed in this pact as relating to an ordering of public finances in indebted states and municipalities and to fomenting competition in broadcasting and telecommunications. An editorial on 3 December in the daily Excelsior welcomed the move as "an excellent signal for society" and observed that "the first impression" it gave was that "the new government and...the parties really negotiated and offer a serious document with 95 more or less concrete commitments gathering many of the three forces' proposals" in the July 2012 general elections. The pact's implementation, it added, would depend on tax reforms that would "significantly increase" the state's capacity to finance itself, given the inclusion of pledges relating to social security. Spokesmen for the three main parties - the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), conservative National Action Party (PAN) and socialist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) - also welcomed the pact, expressing hope it would benefit Mexico. The PAN's parliamentary coordinator Alberto Villarreal said his party would not "deny our country the reforms needed for its advancement. We will not be the ones to impede Mexico's advancement and growth," El Universal reported. He was perhaps referring to the two PAN governments' inability to legislate reforms in the preceding 12 years for lack of support from other parties, particularly the PRI.

Mexico's former education minister dies

Politicians paid their respects on 25 September to Alonso Lujambio Irazábal, a senator of the conservative National Action Party and Mexico's former education minister who died of cancer that day, newspapers reported. Born in 1962, he studied sociology in Mexico, then politics at Yale University in the United States. He worked with the electoral authority from 1997 to 2003, advised the United Nations on designing parliamentary elections for Iraq after the overthrow of its dictator Saddam Hussein, and lectured at Mexico's Iberoamericana and Autonomous National (UNAM) universities. He served as Public Education Secretary from April 2009 to March 2012 when he resigned for ill health; his illness also ended the presidential race he began in 2011 as a pre-candidate. On 29 August - after months of medical treatment - he went to the Senate to swear his oath as a member and received a standing ovation. President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa called him "a kind human being" and example of "good sense and honesty," Excelsior reported on 25 September.

Court ratifies Mexico's general elections

Mexico's supreme electoral court the TEPJF formally ratified on 31 August the results of the 1 July general elections and declared Enrique Peña Nieto to be the next president, due to take office on 1 December, the Associated Press and media reported. The court's seven members were unanimous; a day before they had rejected leftist politicians' demands that the court cancel the polls for alleged fraud. The court declared that Peña Nieto of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won 19,158,592 or 38.2 per cent of all votes cast, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Progress Coalition 15,848,827 or 31.6 per cent of votes and the conservative candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota of the National Action Party (PAN), 12,731,630 votes. The PRI president Pedro Joaquín Coldwell said that day that the decision "fully accredited" the PRI's victory, which has been challenged by López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party, the PAN and certain civil groups. Joaquín Colwell urged López Obrador to respect the decision and Mexico's "institutions." Enrique Peña Nieto declared at the TEPJF's offices in Mexico City that the decision opened a new period of "work with shared responsibility." He said he was aware of "national needs and urgencies" and would lead a "modern and responsible" government "open to criticism," EFE reported on 31 August. He promised to honour campaign promises and meet Mexicans' expectations with "deeds, works and actions."