Weekly Report - 11 March 2010 (WR-10-10)

The ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) is being criticised from all sides for its ill-advised attempt to practice low politics. It has now transpired that last year the PAN reached an understanding with the biggest party in congress, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), to get the government's mild reform programme and budget through congress in the autumn of 2009. In return the PAN promised not to join any “Stop the PRI" alliances in the gubernatorial elections this year.  The PAN, however, welshed on its side of the bargain, setting up a string of anti-PRI alliances in various states and threatening to establish an anti-PRI alliance in the Estado de México, the country's biggest and richest state, in its gubernatorial election in 2011.