Upon seeing the 2016 finger pointing and war threats within the Mexican electoral process Jesus Christ descended upon Mexico and told the contending political parties the same phrase he used once to defend an adulteress from stoning:
“The one who is without sin is the one who should cast the first stone.”
Jesus should have not even mentioned it because what was a mudslinging process turned into a stone throwing war between Mexican political parties National Action (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary (PRI).
Pardon the joke but I just couldn’t refrain from telling it, because in the race for governor in the state of Tamaulipas the crap has hit the fan. Tamaulipas is one of 12 states having elections for governor and municipal mayors next June 5.
This week PRI leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones rejected the candidacies of three people running for municipal governments in the U.S. border state of Tamaulipas, accusing them of having ties to organized crime groups Gulf Cartel and Zetas, who have brought Tamaulipas to its knees.
The three PRI candidates accused by Beltrones belong to the states of Hidalgo, Villagrán and Maneiro, all of them bordering with the state of Nuevo León. The opposite border of the state is the Gulf of Mexico.
The three candidates nearly expelled from the PRI are Reyes Zúñiga of Hidalgo, Gustavo Estrella of Villagrán and Luis Aldape of Maneiro.
The only one that came out on his own defense was Hidalgo’s Reyes Zúñiga who is demanding that Beltrones present a legal accusation against him.
“I have been a party member all my life. I am a teacher and have led the local teachers’ union for years. I have no links to organized crime nor have I been forced to serve under them,” Zúñiga to a reporter from Milenio television Monday.
What’s dangerous here is not if these candidates are clean or dirty, but Manlio Fabio Beltrones himself casting the first stone when he said:
“The PRI doesn’t want to have someone who looks like Abarca [in Tamaulipas], like what happened to the Democratic Revolution Party and López Obrador in Iguala,” Beltrones said.
He was referring to the case of Luis Abarca, the mayor who ran the Iguala municipality where 43 students were abducted by police and allegedly handed over to heroin trafficking cartel Guerreros Unidos in September 2014.
Lest we forget Beltrones himself has been pointed out by U.S. government official sources while he was governor of Sonora on March 31, 1997.
An article published by The New York Times, and penned by Sam Dillon and Pulitzer Prize journalist Craig Pyes, had this lead paragraph with info stemming out straight from the Justice Department:
“The Governor of the Mexican state that borders Arizona is collaborating with one of the world’s most powerful drug traffickers, creating a haven for smugglers who transport vast quantities of narcotics into the United States, according to American officials and intelligence.”
“Officials said this conclusion was based on a wealth of evidence, including ‘highly reliable’ informers’ reports that the governor, Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera, took part in meetings in which leading traffickers paid high-level politicians who were protecting their operations.”
Besides being related to the drug trafficking gangs, Beltrones accused the three alleged PRI outcasts of supporting the PAN candidate Javier García who of course, rightly so, is tantamount to treason. Local sources claim that these three municipalities are under the control of the Gulf Cartel, which orders people how to vote.
PAN national president Ricardo Anaya quickly responded that Beltrones’ removal of the three candidates was a move to negatively affect the PAN’s image.
“The cynicism of the PRI has no limits and if there is a party that’s been historically linked to organized criminals in Tamaulipas is the PRI. Let’s not forget that two former governors of Tamaulipas, Tomás Yarrington and Eugenio Hernández, who are today on the lam from the law and are being persecuted due to their relationship to criminals,” Anaya said.
No doubt about it, the stoning will go on but all the pitchers are free of sin.
