PRD Leaders Go On Hunger Strike to Protest PRI Aggression

(Acapulco, JG 17 January) Leaders of the PRD went on a hunger strike to demand punishment of those responsible for beating the party’s representative to the State Election Institute. Last week, Guillermo Sánchez Nava was assaulted and beaten by a group of 20 or more youths wearing Añorve t-shirts, presumed members of the “Añorve Brigade.” The victim has been hospitalized in a coma ever since, in serious condition, or worse.

Some PRI leaders have questioned whether Sánchez Nava really had been injured, and others said that it was his fault for being the aggressor against the brigade of young men. Senators Fernando Castro Tenti (PRI) and Adolfo Toledo Infanzón (PRI) have been loudly condemned for their statements. The latter said that it was a “self-kidnapping” and was a “smoke screen.”

The hunger strike began yesterday at 8:00 am in Acapulco’s Zocalo. The objective is to demand justice for Sánchez Nava. They want the voters to realize that the PRI is conducting a “dirty war” against the PRD, evidently worried that it will lose the election if people are permitted to vote freely. Hence the PRD leaders seek to call attention to the PRI tactics of vote suppression, intimidation and violence.

One angry activist called upon the election board to cancel the candidacy of Añorve Baños unless his people cooperate with bringing to justice the assailants of the PRD leader. Another alleged that the state attorney general’s office seems to have no interest in pursuing the case, which suggests political favoritism for the PRI candidate.

Separately, in a press conference held by federal representative Porfirio Muñoz Ledo (PT), the legislator called the PRI leaders liars. “An intimidation campaign is going on, and the problem about the case of Guillermo Sánchez Nava is that he was beaten up by PRI thugs. It’s political violence, not organized crime. They were thugs, possibly drugged up, who were sent out there to kill.”

In Tlapa, PRD national chairman Jesús Ortega Martínez said of one of the PRI senators who publicly cast doubt on the veracity of the reported assaults: “Trenti is a swine. . . . He is a savage. He, who is involved in all sorts of shady dealings, doubts that this man is poised between life and death?” He added, “Trenti is one of the Tijuana people. He specializes in that kind of aggression.”