Meet Mexico's Fake Shadow President, Who Demands To Be Called 'Legitimate President'
The other day your Wonkette LIED when we described whatever Facebook thing happened with the French President as our "annual bit of foreign news." Turns out there were two foreign things to happen in 2009! Kindly direct your attention to this absolutely insane Wall Street Journal article: "Like a lot of countries, Mexico has a federal government. It meets in a number of imposing colonial and modern buildings around the country. But Mexico has another body, the so-called 'Legitimate Government,' which claims to be running the republic, too. It meets here in the capital every 15 days in a former garage at 64 San Luis Potosí St." Please and thank you!
A bunch of countries have shadow governments in case something happens like the US decides to bomb their real governments, but this Mexican iteration is so comical! The president of Mexico's shadow government demands that everyone call him the "Legitimate President of Mexico." Dude lost the presidential election in 2006, citing election fraud, and inaugurated himself in public anyway.
He went on to found a parallel executive branch of government that proposes new laws, issues statements, holds elections, officiates during Mexican Independence Day, and even circulates its own form of identification card for Mexicans (some 2.8 million Mexicans carry them, according to a Legitimate Government spokesman).
Nowadays, Mr. López Obrador tours the country giving presidential speeches where he is introduced as the real McCoy. After three years of this, he will soon have visited all of Mexico's 2,438 municipalities. That would make him, he says, the first politician -- indeed, maybe even the first man -- ever to have done that.
Everyone involved Legitimate Government is of course tragically earnest about it all, while everyone in Government Government tries their best to be polite and patient... but goodness!