President Fecal absolves himself and blames extent of Tabasco floods on Mother Nature

In his first year in office Fecal has proven to be one of Gore's more dedicated allies in his mission to educate the world on how to curb the devastating impact that global warming is already having on our earth. In the wake of the Tabasco floods, he's once again resorted to his green rhetoric, blaming the extent of the damage of the disaster on global climate change. President Fecal on the flooding that has left 80% of the state of Tabasco under water:

"This is not just the worst natural catastrophe in the state's history but, I would venture to say, one of the worst in the recent history of the country," Calderon said Friday during an emergency meeting with state officials in Villahermosa.

In recent days more evidence has been revealed that substantiates the Mexican left's claim that, like in the case of Katrina, man's negligence, as much as 'nature,' is at fault for the scale of the flood's damages.

Days after the October 1999 floods that left hundreds dead in several coastal states, the national government, mainly via direct Pemex donations, sent US$200 million to the race cutting, former Tabasco state governor Roberto Madrazo to help out with rebuilding the state's shattered infrastructure. In a more permanent step toward supporting the state's ability to develop mechanisms designed to protect its people in the case of future flooding, President Vicente Fox founded the Integral Project against Inundations (PICI) in 2003. Over the next five years, including a payment guarantee set aside for 2008, Tabasco received an additional US$ 180 million in PICI funds. The money was to be allocated to various projects including the construction of dams and emergency drainage systems. Last Tuesday, the Ample Progressive Front (FAP), a left leaning political alliance that includes the PRD, Worker's Party (PT) and Convergence and holds 155 of the 500 seats in the national House of Deputies, accused Tabasco's state government, in addition to Fecal and his two immediate predecessors, of having a hand in the disappearance of the nearly US$ 200 million.

While it's impossible to know just how much the incompleteness of many of PICI's flood protection projects exacerbated the damage of last month's floods, everyone is basically in agreement that it only made things worse. Just today, the head of Mexico City's local congress made new calls for the launching of a comprehensive investigation into the fate of the PICI funds. You can certainly count on national PRI officials to come to Madrazo's aid by doing what they can to make the investigations stall.

Just one day after FAP representatives castigated state and national officials for the mismanagement of the PICI money, they joined 'legitimate president' AMLO in accusing the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and the Secretary of Energy of having intentionally kept the four dams located along Tabasco's Grijalva River working at only 30% capacity. FAP members believe the CFE's decision to not realize more of the dams' energy-generating potential can be explained by its calculated efforts to make Mexico's energy market more friendly toward foreign, mainly Spanish companies, which currently supply Mexico with 22.5% of its total electricity. CFE's preferential treatment paid off in recent months as foreign supply rose by nearly 10% and local production took a hit of more than 1%.

As a result of being under used, the dams were already 96% full by the time the three days of heavy rain began late last month. In light of AMLO's accusations, the CFE has claimed that the available evidence indicates that the water released from its opening of the floodgates of Peñitas, Villahermosa's primary dam, accounted for only 3% of the total flooding of the state's capital city. AMLO, however, maintains that the 3% figure is extremely dubious considering how little available space there was for rain water to accumulate before the CFE made the decision to drain what AMLO and the majority of the FAP consider was a large portion of it.

While many have been quick to cast aside these recent accusations as paranoid conspiracy theories being used by the left to politicize the Tabasco floods, many of the FAP's questions have fallen upon deaf ears and sealed lips. If the left's claims are really as ridiculous as the right is claiming them to be it should join FAP in its calls for the launching of investigations into both the whereabouts of the US$ 400 million sent to Tabasco over the last eight years and the CFE's negligent oversight of the Villahermosa dams. As will likely be revealed if any serious investigations do actually take place, man had a much larger part to play in the devastation caused by the Tabasco floods than Fecal would like to think. If anything, his recent decision to heavily fund a project that would adopt PICI's strategies in protecting Mexico City can be a sign that, while unwilling to admit it publicly, Fecal understands that with the proper foresight man can do plenty to limit his vulnerability to Mother Nature's capricious temper.

Again, this is not a Mexican problem. We sat back and watched as our own president took his sweet time to respond to a natural disaster that developed into our country's worst as a result of the decades of mismanagement of New Orleans' levy system. Let our nation's leaders, for once, not let their failure to learn from history be the cause of hardship for thousands if not millions of their undeserving citizens.

NOTE: As you probably noticed, several links will take you to Spanish-only resources. The fact is that at this point the Mexican La Jornada daily newspaper stands alone in offering any coverage whatsoever of the debate surrounding the role of the state and national governments in the Tabasco catastrophe.