Weekly Report - 25 September 2008 (ISSN 1741-7422)

The general assumption among politicians and commentators that the government would get some sort of useful reform to the state oil monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos, through congress before Christmas is crumbling. The government's failure to get on top of the drug gangs, demonstrated by the grenade attacks in Morelia, Michoacán on 15 September, have complicated its relations with congress. All but one of the 33 senators from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the biggest opposition party in the upper house, refused to attend the testimonies given by the government's top two security ministers on 22 September.