Thanks for another perspective. In politics, no matter how unbiased one tries to be, one’s personal biases always creep in, so in order to best understand any situation, it’s great to receive opposition view points.

As far as the leftist clarification, I guess it all depends on how you define “leftist”. In the U.S., the left equates more with liberal than anything, not violent, anti-american, pro-communist, etc. Radicals in the U.S. exist on many levels, religious radicals and right wing radicals and left wing radicals. And as far as how strong sentiment is, I guess it depends on who’s newspaper you believe. Some papers mentioned only 10,000 or so attendees at Zocalo during the swearing in of Obrador. Others mentioned at least 100,000 or so. It’s always difficult to accurately size up a situation without the benefit of actually being somewhere.

In any event, thanks for your opinion. A greater forum of discussion is great because it allows readers a wider perspective of a situation from which they can formulate their own opinions.

Best,

J.S.

“many Mexicans were furious at the looting of national assets that occurred under the Fox administration, such as the sale of national bank Banamex to U.S. multi-corporate giant Citigroup”

Banamex had been privatized many years before President Fox took office, there was no looting there. The same business men who acquired the bank decided to merge their shares with Citigroup and now are part of their stockholders board in USA, they have two or three seats. But all banks had been privatized before President Fox arrived. Some of the PRD accusations pointed out that during the merge operation, the shareholders didn’t pay the income tax, but that is the way our fiscal law work and the only ones who can change that is the congressmen.

You also mention:
“Two things seem to be certain here. One is that leftist sentiment is strong in Mexico. At least strong enough to prevent a very determined President Vicente Fox from giving his last State of the Nation address”

Leftist sentiment is not that strong in Mexico, in fact, the leftist coalition in Congress that prevented Fox, by means of violently taking the podium, represent less than 30 % of the people, the PRD has only 126 congressmen while PAN, the party in power, has 206, almost twice as many, and the PRD together with PT and Convergencia have still less congressmen that PAN alone.
It is also important to point out that there are still other political forces and they all agreed and acepted to receive the President in congress, the PRI, a center party and the former ruling party, and the third largest force in congress with more than 100 congressmen, and there is the Green Party PVEM, and PANAL and Alternativa. The leftist party PRD and their coalition (PT and Convergencia) took the podium where President Fox was suppossed to deliver his Presidential Address in September. But then now on December 1st, PAN paid them back in the same way, they took the Podium to guarantee that the new President takes the Oath, and they succeeded. Felipe Calderon is now the new President of Mexico.
The Left in Mexico has a history of being violent, and everytime they start getting some votes they forget the rules of democratic governance and want to take power one way or another. Our left is a kind or mirror of the Cuban or Venezuelan left, very communist and dogmatic, totalitarian and anti-american and that is why the mayority of Mexicans are always afraid of them.
This past elections the PRD Presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador, was able to gather a lot of support, but the international press exaggerates the facts and ignores or pay no attention to the fact that our political system is divided in three mayor blocks, PRI, PAN and PRD and so just like the USA is a 50/50 country, we are a 33/33/33 country. Where in the last elections the PAN got some 34.5%, PRD 34.0% and the PRI some 22% with the rest going to the little parties.

As usual, the left still holds strong relations to violent groups and they try to blackmail our society by stirring violence using their labor unions and students from UNAM, our national university and house of radical professors who are contiually brainwashing the students and trying to convert them to communism, anti-americanism, anti-semitism and other radical things.