Just in case you are completely uninformed, Yucatan will soon sport a new governor, a woman, whose name is Ivonne Ortega and she is from the formerly (70 years) ruling party of Mexico, the PRI. Everyone that knows her and is on her side insists she is very charismatic and just a wonderful person.

The PANistas are quite upset, especially the ultra-right catholic chest beaters in Merida; how this could have happened is beyond them. But, as someone pointed out as a possible exclamation: The PRI governments stole everything they could, but also helped a lot of people especially in the poor, rural areas of Yucatan, while the PAN government just helped itself to everything without giving anything back.

My candidate, Cholo, didn’t fare very well, but I suppose he served his purpose, which was to distract voters and votes from some of the other candidates. Ana Rosa, who would have won had she been the candidate for the PAN party, also fared poorly. The logic among the Ana Rosistas was that while they supported her, she had no chance so they voted for someone else, mainly Ivonne Ortega. If everyone who preferred Ana Rosa had actually voted for her, and not copped out, she would have probably won.

Conspiracy theories abound: The PRI was ‘given’ the Yucatan in exchange for less antagonism at the federal level where the PRI controls the Congress and generally opposed the president; Ana Rosa was forced out of the PAN party by the PRI who knew they could not beat the PAN with Ana Rosa and offered her a deal – in exchange for her dimission from the PAN governor race, a hueso, or political appointment within the PRI government.

As I hear more of these charming theories, I will be sure to post them for your amusement.

Yucatecans both local and imported are suffering from election campaign overload, and we can all be thankful that it will come to an end very soon.

You can´t see the trees or the walls of the city – or anything else for that matter – thanks to the virtual wallpapering of Merida with visual election propaganda. The TV and radio are also crammed with ads for the two main candidates from the PAN and PRI party.

Luckily for me, I don´t watch local TV (definitely pena ajena material) so I am not subjected to the assault as are some of Yucatan’s less fortunate citizens who, without the dish providing them with Sky, can only tune in those channels. And the radio, well I cannot thank Steve Jobs enough for coming up with the iPod, which in turn led to iTunes which led to Podcasts.

I think everyone misses the sight of trees without a purple and orange ‘X’ on them and listening to Fernando Ayora mangling English band names on 97.7. I can’t wait to see the trees again but I won’t be tuning in Merida’s worst radio station any time soon…

In a previous post on the Yucatan gubernatorial (is that even a word?) candidates, I don’t think I mentioned Cholo aka Hector Herrera, a regional comic/comedian who has been doing regional theater (read extremely local humor) for years now.

How could I forget Ana Rosa Payan? I apologize to her and all the avid readers of this blog who wrote to remind me that she was also contending in the upcoming gubernatorial race. Is that a word, I wonder?

Personally, I still think that Ana Rosa is, among all the mediocre contenders scrabbling to get their flacid buttocks into the Governor’s chair, the only one who actually has any cojones.

On the other hand, were I able to actually cast a vote, it would be for Cholo, whose campaign slogan is “Mas vale Cholo, que mal acompañado”. Loosely translated, this means that it’s better to go it alone, than accompanied by questionable character. And the ‘alone’ part (solo, in spanish) is changed to Cholo. Clever.

Much more so than the asinine, vapid promises and slogans of the PAN and PRI parties. These are (Xavier, PAN) “Te Va a ir Mejor”. In english: “You’ll be Better Off”. Is this original or what? No candidate anywhere has ever said that before! And is it saying that we are not doing so well now? According to who? A little presumptuous, I think. He promises ‘more jobs’, ‘more investment in rural areas’ and ‘better wages’ too. Will Yucatecans really fall for such empty, unreasonable and unfeasible blatherings? Is he really that boring and unoriginal?

The PRI is of course in the same boat, making the same promises, just phrased a little differently. While the PAN is admitting that things are not as good as they could be (and they themselves have been in power for the last few terms, hello) the PRI’s claim to fame is that they have a fresh face on the cover of their recycled pulp fiction paper back and that this is all it will take because she (Yvonne) has ‘passion for the Yucatan’.

So back to Cholo, who was recently photographed, broom in hand, sweeping the sidewalk in front of his campaign office. If you really want someone different, someone who really loves the Yucatan and will shake things up a bit, this would be your candidate.