Patricia Guadalupe Columnist

The impressive scandal in the state of Illinois with the governor Rod Blagojevich, accused to try to "sell" the bench of the projecting senator – and elect president Barack Obama – has to legislators of the state making sure that they had not anything in common with what accuses the governor. When Obama gained the presidency – even earlier – it was circulating an informal list of persons who it could happen, between them the democratic conferee Luis Gutiérrez, of Chicago.

So much he like the elect president and other officials say be surprised that the accusations against Blagojevich, who as governor has the right to name the person who will serve in the Obama bench before the next congressional elections in two years. But now with the accusations, the state term could ask that a special election should be carried out. That is in veremos.

Meanwhile, it continues the waiting for several appointments in the Office of the elect president and other major positions. Conferee John Salazar, of Colorado, is a “strong candidate” for Agriculture Secretary. Salazar has a ranch in his native state and it is one of the few ones “active stockbreeders” in the federal term. Also the labor activist Linda Chávez-Thompson continues, under consideration for the Secretary's position of the Department of Work.

Also conferee Xavier Becerra, of California, recently met Obama to speak on the Representative's position of Commercial Matters. If Snapdragon, who has a leadership position in the Lower House, leaves the Congress to go away to unite with the president, conferee Joe Baca – the projecting president of the group of Hispanic conferees – says that it would be interesting to him to be in the position that at present has Snapdragon, that of assistant to the president of the Chamber. This leadership position is for vote of his companions, and the interested parties they are in full lobbying in search of support. Of bringing in Roof rack there would be complicated conferee Hilda Solís, of whom one comments to be “very interested” in the position. Solís is provided with the informal support of the current leadership of the Lower House, and Roof rack has the reputation of being on bad terms with the women who integrate the group of Hispanic conferees, and with the same leader of the Congress. Obviously if they elect another person as a leader of the Chamber, it would be another story. It is another fact that is in veremos, in waiting of the new congressional meeting.

And why should it import everything for us this one pulls and pulls on leadership positions in the Congress? Because there are these who handle big part of the legislation that will appear.

And while here it is cold, in the Caribbean city of Santiago de Cuba several countries of the Caribbean Sea met. The member countries of the holding Caricom asked of the elect president Obama it “to move his change message” to the politics towards Cuba and to finish the American sequestration against the island. Obama has said that it will slacken the restrictions of traveling and sending funds to the island, but that will leave the sequestration to use it in negotiations with the Cuban government, something that his critics say is a politics that “less that it represents is the change”.