Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Divided government in Mexico

Divided government is not unique to the U.S. In the shadow of outright warfare, the Mexican legislature did not act on proposals for reform.

Mexican Leader’s Crime Effort Fails to Advance

President Felipe Calderón’s effort to reorganize local police forces and clamp down on money laundering in the fight against organized crime has suffered a setback with the failure of the Mexican Congress to move forward on the initiatives.

…Congress adjourned... without voting on any of the significant changes that Mr. Calderón had proposed…

Mr. Calderón had put much stock in his plan to clean up local police forces, which are seen as particularly close to organized crime groups, by bringing them under the control of state governors. But lawmakers, including some in Mr. Calderón’s party, have questioned whether that would give too much control to governors, some of whom have also been found to have connections with drug gangs…

The president’s right-leaning National Action Party [PAN] controls the Senate, but the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party [PRI], which had governed for decades, has a plurality in the lower chamber and is anxious to take back the presidency in 2012 elections.

“In effect, Calderón entered his lame-duck phase from July 2009 when he lost Congress,” Fernando Dworak, a political consultant here, said, referring to legislative elections that gave the Institutional Revolutionary Party its plurality in the lower chamber...

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Labels: leadership, legislature, Mexico, politics