Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Lopez Obrador (anew)



Blogger has added a new technology that permits the scribe to upload an image directly into the text of the post, as opposed to requiring a second post. If it works out, highwayscribery will stick with it.

Also, the scribe would like to point out that Mrs. Scribe observed how the blog's settings only permitted people with "Blogger" accounts to comment on the writings contained herein. Such is no longer the case as the scribe has made adjustments that allow anonymous infusions of opinion as well.

A few months ago highwayscribery did a post on Manuel López Obrador, mayor of Mexico City and frontrunner in polls measuring the upcoming presidential race in that country ("Mexico Rising?" April 24). In short, we said we liked him, because of the hope he raised in progressive circles and in the lives of real people.

His tenure as mayor is ending this week and a fine column entitled “Ciudad Perdida” or "Lost City" in the left-wing daily “La Jornada” commented on his departure.

The column’s author is a gentleman by the name of Miguel Angel Velásquez and here are some excerpts from his article:

“Today initiates the last week in power of a government that, say what they may, will be one most remembered for the differences it established with respect to all those that have preceded it – at least during the past 25 years.

“Many and worthy are the present administration's deeds, which have changed the face of the city, but perhaps the most important role during its tenure was played by the people.

“In spite of the criticism, some in good faith and others not, the government of Revolutionary Democratic Party bet on opening the doors to the citizenry, to the repressed expressions of the city’s inhabitants, while divesting importance from the interpretations of purportedly representative politicians regarding the needs of the population over a long, long time.

“Little was done to take into account the opinions of those who control politics and instead the needs, urgencies really, of a city drowning for lack of public schools was revealed, as a debate was unleashed between those who could afford to pay for education and those whose only alternative was ignorance.

“They used the money of those who pay taxes to restore the dignity of those human beings whom the consumer society considers refuse and constructed rapid transit projects for those whose social value is sustained by four wheels.

“The political operators were distanced from the public trough and, with the middlemen eliminated, the money was spent on the necessary projects already mentioned here, while causing anger in the circles of political patronage.

“But perhaps the greatest gain was in the consciousness gained by the population in confronting total power, by deciding to protest injustices and by going beyond the political parties and interest groups.

"No, after these six years Mexico City will not be the same, neither internally or externally. The streets, many of them, are no longer the same. And neither are the people who walk them.”

the scribe asks, what journalist in this country might approach politics in this way? And what politician of either party could inspire them?

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