I nominate the entire Mexican system of governance, much deservingly to the title of "Morons of the Millennium"
ROFL... (don't miss the bolded part at the end)
An authoritarian Democracy
or
Un país de bicicleteros (ó de boleros)
[a country of shoe-shinners LOL ]
The evidence....
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From the interview... Frontline (PBS) and Andrés Oppenheimer (Miami Herald foreign correspondant and co-winner of the Pullitzer Prize)
PERHAPS YOU COULD GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM YOU'RE ALLUDING TO WHICH HAS BEEN IN PLACE SINCE THE REVOLUTION, IS THAT RIGHT?
Do you want me to tell you an anecdote? Let me tell you a story. A few days before the 1994 election, I went down to the streets and looked for a shoe shiner who I knew. And he wasn't there and neither was any other shoe shiner in downtown Mexico. I couldn't find any. So after the elections, I went to the one I knew and I asked him where had he been. And he said, oh well for the elections and the week before, we had all - we all were summoned to go to the ruling party rallies, political rallies for the presidential campaign. So I told him, come on, you're not a pro-government type. Why did you go? So he explained me how it works. If you're a shoe shiner in Mexico City, you need a license. To get that license you have to go to the shoe shiners union which is tied to the ruling party. So when you get that license, along with it you get a credential which makes you a member of the ruling party. So you've got social benefits, you get free lunches, you get free uniforms, you get a free burial when you die. You get all kinds of benefits but on the other hand, you're required to attend ruling party meetings. That's why when you go to a . . . a political rally, you see tens of thousands of people. So I asked him, well what happens if you don't go? And he says, well you have to go because when you go you get a little stamped ticket that says that you have attended the political rally. And the next day when you go to work to your corner an inspector passes by and if you don't show your receipt, your stamped piece of paper, you're suspended for three days. So the system still has mechanisms of political control which are not visible. They're traces of old times, you know, dirty, authoritarian mechanisms of political control in a society that indeed has become much freer and much more open.
IS THE SHOE SHINER PART OF THE CORRUPT POLITICAL SYSTEM YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?
Mexico has become a more open society in recent years but it is still an authoritarian democracy.
pbs.org
Henry Louis Mencken would have had a field day with these lunatics... then again, someone like him could not have survived this system.
One more sample... -ggg-
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LET'S TALK ABOUT THE FAMOUS DINNER. A WHOLE CHAPTER OF YOUR BOOK IS DEVOTED TO THAT DINNER. IN FEBRUARY '93, SALINAS HELD A PRIVATE DINNER.
On February 23rd, 1993, there was a secret dinner party at the home of Antonio Ortiz Mena, an old time government official. All the 30 biggest businessmen in Mexico, the wealthiest people in Mexico, all men by the way, arrived in limousines and sat down. They had an idea, but didn't quite exactly know what they had been summoned for.
AND AMONGST THEM WERE ALL THE PEOPLE THAT BENEFITED FROM PRIVATIZATION . . .
Among them were, you know, Carlos Slim, Carlos Hank Rohn, Emilio Azcarraga, all the big businessmen, billionaires as they call them here who in some way or another, benefited from the privatization of state owned companies. And at the dinner, they were asked to contribute $25 million each to the upcoming presidential campaign, $25 million each. That's a lot of money. That made together about $750 million. It was like way, way, way beyond what any American president ever got from the private sector or from anybody else and this is from a country whose economy is about the size of that of the state of Ohio.
AND THE REACTION WAS?
Well eventually the word leaked out and this made a big, big scandal in Mexico because this was sort of a reflection of how the system works. This was a secret meeting behind the backs of the people, and it sort of illustrated the close relationship between some of the richest people in this country and the government. It was all done secretly behind the people's back without anybody knowing. And two or three people who attended that dinner who told me how it went, gave me the details about it, and explained to me that some people were very uneasy about it. Some of these rich people said, hey, you know, should we be in the business of bankrolling the presidential candidate? But eventually the whole thing came out in the open and the official word was that the whole thing was, you know, forgotten. But insiders of the party say that most of them gave money under the table afterwards.
$25 MILLION.
Each.
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** These are 25 Million US DOLLARS (not Pancholares) -g- |
