Fiery leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to hold street protests to block approval of a watered-down reform of Mexico’s state-owned oil industry expected to come up for a vote in the Senate yesterday.
In April, Lopez Obrador’s followers blockaded the Senate chambers to prevent lawmakers from even considering the plan and now apparently aim to do so again.
‘BRIGADES’
“Starting very early tomorrow, we will have to be in front the Senate to prevent them from approving any of the bills dealing with oil,” Lopez Obrador told thousands of supporters who call themselves the “oil defense brigades.”
His supporters decided after a meeting on Wednesday to oppose the reforms.
Lopez Obrador claims the reform initiative is an attempt to privatize the oil industry, which was nationalized in 1938.
AT ODDS
He is at odds with some legislators of his own Democratic Revolution Party, however, who say they managed to delete the privatization aspects from the proposal.
The difference could mark a deepening of the split between Lopez Obrador — a former presidential candidate who claims fraud cheated him of a victory in the 2006 elections and calls himself the “legitimate president” — and more moderate elements of his party, the PRD.
The party’s national executive committee issued a statement on Wednesday saying it backed the reform bill.
ORIGINAL PLAN
As originally proposed by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the bill would have allowed private investment in oil refineries and payment based on performance for private companies to perform badly needed deep-water exploration off Mexico’s coasts.
But following the April protests, lawmakers negotiated and agreed to strip those provisions out of the bill.
It now allows no privately built refineries and limits exploration or drilling work to a straight contractual basis, without any results-based bonuses.
Lopez Obrador has been building a national movement centered around himself, while many members of his already divided party negotiated with other parties to find solutions to the decline in Mexico’s oil production, as the country’s aging shallow-water oil fields begin to run out of crude.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not