Thursday, March 17, 2005

Strike averted, electricians get 6.5% raise...

...if only our raises at Georgia Tech were so generous...maybe we need to unionize. You can read about the resolution of the labor conflict in La Jornada here.

In a strange twist, Secretary of State Creel (and likely PAN candidate in 2006 for President if he isn't edged out by the current First Lady) issued a statement through the PAN CEN indicating that his statements were misrepresented in a NYTimes article published yesterday. According to the story in La Jornada,

El titular de la Secretaría de Gobernación, Santiago Creel Miranda, aseguró anoche, ante el Comité Ejecutivo Nacional del Partido Acción Nacional, que no declaró al periódico The New York Times que si Andrés Manuel López Obrador llega a la Presidencia arruinaría la economía; lo que sí dije, sostuvo, es que el presidente Vicente Fox tiene una política económica totalmente diferente a la del jefe de Gobierno de la ciudad....

...en un comunicado, la Secretaría de Gobernación desmintió al diario estadunidense, que atribuyó textualmente a Creel Miranda haber dicho que "(Andrés Manuel) López Obrador en la Presidencia sería un desastre económico"

So essentially, he's denying saying that if AMLO becomes President of Mexico that it would ruin the economy or be an economic disaster. All he admits to doing is pointing out the difference between Fox and AMLO policies.

That's fine, because I could not find any such statement in the NYTimes article (free registration required). The reporter interprets Creel's comments as meaning that he thinks AMLO would be an economic disaster, but he does not attribute those comments to Creel. Here's the excerpt:

Santiago Creel, the current secretary of government who is seen as the most likely candidate for president from Mr. Fox's conservative National Action Party, known as PAN, made it plain in a recent interview he thought a López presidency would be an economic disaster.

"What is clear is that he has rejected all the economic reforms that we have put forward, all of them," Mr. Creel said. "And it's clear that his government has raised the level of public debt in a very important way and has also raised the levels of subsidies, making a pretty artificial economy."

A subtle distinction, yes, but I still think Creel doth protest too much.

In national labor news, the FSTSE is being attacked on all sides. Yet another group of government employee unions are separating from the FSTSE to form their own Federation. They're not joining Gordillo's FEDESSP either; they want true union democracy. I'm too tired to comment, so you can read all about it in this article.

And, the debate about universal old-age minimum pensions continues. AMLO responds to Fox's comments. (Again, the article mentions WB support for such pensions, and apparently AMLO waved a recent issue of The Economist to support his claim. I, however, could find no article in the online version of the Economist citing either AMLO's pension program or WB support for such programs elsewhere....)

posted by Michelle @ 11:10 AM,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home