Have you heard any good jokes lately?
Here is a political one from beautiful downtown Catemaco.
7 years ago the mayor of Catemaco was jailed for alleged rape and malfeasance. A new election was called and elected a mayor from a different party.
The old mayor got out of jail on one of those Monopoly "Get out of jail free" cards. These cards are being distributed on a daily basis by the judicial system in Veracruz to participants in the game who either own or have a relative that owns Boardwalk.
The previously jailed mayor won the next election on behalf of a different party than the one that jailed him. This was similar to US agendas that elected convicted drug lord Barry in Washington, DC, USA.
After being in office for 2 years and spouting innumerable urban renewal programs not funded by the Veracruz government which controls most of the finacial strings of small provincial towns, this latest Catemaco mayor tried to buck the existing power structure by organizing a road block of a federal highway, assisted by some of the internationally famous witch doctors (BRUJOS) of Catemaco.
As predictable by any agnostic observer, the mayor's attempt failed and instead landed his community in the proverbial "shithouse" of places that the state government does not send discretionary funds to.
So this mayor, funded by millions of disappeared pesos for improvement project in Catemaco, which miraculously never improved, temporarily resigned to obtain the designation of candidate for his latest party's commitment in its quest for a piece of the Veracruz government.
The Veracruz government, like all Mexican states, elects most of its state representatives to the state government by direct vote. BUT, approximately 1/3 of the representatives are assigned to the participating parties to bestow as they see fit.
The Catemaco mayor, known as the "Little Prince", among his many other less flattering names, failed to gain his party's indirect nomination, known as plurinominal.
So the "little prince" returned to his job as mayor of Catemaco and spent a few weeks of renewing his ties to his political power base.
As of 1 June 2007 he quit again to pursue the nomination of his party as the uninominal candidate of Los Tuxtlas. That means he wants to get elected on the basis of a direct vote, after his party turned him down for an assigned vote.
There are other contenders. But for "the little prince" a victory is absolutely necessary, otherwise his " Get out of jail card free" card will be cancelled and he will have to face a variety of local, state, and federal lawsuits against him, which by quirky Mexican law have not been enforceable while the "little prince" was an elected official.
That is just he story of one Catemaco official. Do you want to hear about the one who watched heads rolls on his mayorial watch, and ascended to legislative heaven and then got roundly trounced by the "little prince" and consequently switched political allegiance to another party which had been fighting him for a dozen years but now accepts him as a viable candidate?
Or is this enough of a joke?
