In Lead-up to National Chamber of Deputies Election, Oaxaca Teachers Choose a “Punishment Vote”

by Nancy Davies, NarcoNews (reposted)

Mon, Jun 29, 2009 6:54AM

Saturday, June 27, 2009 One week ahead of the national elections for 500 new deputies (300 first-past-the-post and 200 by proportional representation) to sit in the Chamber of Deputies for the 61st Congress of the United States of Mexico, the Oaxaca Education Workers Union (SNTE, by its Spanish initials) Section 22 met in state assembly.

With more than half the votes counted (information from Noticias, June 28, 2009) the teachers have endorsed a “voto de castigo,” a punishment vote. Oaxaca sends eleven representatives to the Federal District.

In 2006, the “punishment vote” meant one should vote for anybody except the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) or the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN), the two parties deemed responsible ― and never held accountable ― for the repression, assassinations, beatings, jailings, etc. against the teachers-popular movement. But reading past the headline, the article states: thus far counted, 16,754 union members voted punishment for all the political parties, 7,147 for annulling one’s vote, and 2,510 for abstention from voting. That represents a total of 26,411 votes out of the 32,793 thus far counted. In other words, only somewhat more than 6,000 teachers were thus far recorded in the assembly as in favor of some party candidate on July 5.