Foot in mouth disease

The governor of Jalisco, Emilio Gonzalez Marquez, has long suffered from the tendency to shoot off at the mouth without much thought for the consequences. Take, for example, his homophobic condemnation of gay marriage, which resulted in a still pending inquiry into his behavior by the state's human rights commission (the infamous "asquito" comment). Now he has stuck his foot in it, by not just implying, but rather accusing the PRI of complicity with the narcos. They (the PRI, as he is PAN), he claimed, do not cooperate in approving legislative initiatives because they "still feel a taste, memory, or nostalgia for negotiating with the narcos." His party, of course, does not engage in such activities, he then argued, although the retorts to that assertion have been heated. It's an interesting use of the pax narco thesis, this idea that under the PRI, a sort of peace prevailed because the PRI had been willing to accommodate the narcos. According to the theory's proponents, the election of the PAN and their subsequent pursuit of the narcos upset the balance that the PRI had delicately maintained (at the price of their own integrity, of course). Not surprisingly, the Priistas are up in arms, with the mayor of Guadalajara, Aristoteles Sandoval, at the head of the pack. What gets their hackles up is not just the accusation, but the ambition of the governor, who is said to be considering a presidential run. Que asquito, one might say, about the whole brouhaha.