Fooling Mexican Fans: Debates on Energy Reform at Same Time as World Cup Tournament Francisco Goldman - The New York Times
go to original June 23, 2014

Protesters demonstrated this spring in Mexico City against energy reform that would open up the nationalized oil company to foreign investment. Recently, debates on the reform were scheduled at the same time as the World Cup tournament. (Yuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse)

The day before the Mexican soccer team’s thrilling underdog tie with the World Cup favorite, Brazil, last week, the lead editorial of the news site SinEmbargo was titled, “Ready for your Clamato and Gatorade?” — common hangover remedies. “In about three weeks, when you wake from your World Cup dreams,” the editors wrote, “remember that when the soccer fest began, the country was on the verge of monumental decisions. If upon waking, you realize that the country’s energy reserves have been cheaply sold off or whatever else, don’t bother protesting because this is a chronicle foretold.”

To debate and pass laws that could open Pemex, the nationalized oil company, to foreign investment, the Mexican Congress scheduled legislative sessions from June 10 to 23, dates precisely coinciding with you know what. Final passage might be pushed back, but it originally looked like it was supposed to happen on Monday, when Mexico plays Croatia to decide which country advances to the elimination rounds.
For weeks, critics of President Enrique Peña Nieto and his political party, the PRI, have been denouncing this ploy to hide the historic reforms behind World Cup fever, it being taken for granted that almost no one will be paying attention to whatever happens in Congress.

The writer Juan Villoro — a commentator on both politics and soccer — says this is not the first time the party has tried this. In 1998, under a previous PRI government, Congress passed a $67 billion rescue of Mexican banks, to be paid by taxpayers, on Dec. 12, the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the start of the Christmas holiday. This past Dec. 12, PRI legislators, joined by allies on the right, “fast track” approved, with almost no debate, the constitutional reform opening the way for the Pemex privatization.

Here is a sample of news stories from the last few days (to some of these, SinEmbargo has been affixing the slogan, “And while you go on enjoying the World Cup”): skyrocketing “disappearances”; crackdowns on the press; the corruption of the police, political parties and the justice system.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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