August 27, 2007
Sorting Out a Pivotal State Election in Mexico
Frontera NorteSur
Now that the initial clouds of smoke have begun clearing from the August 5 election in
Baja California, Mexico, political actors and analysts are assessing the local, national and international repercussions of
the raucous race. Final results announced by the Baja California State Election Council show the conservative National Action
Party (PAN) of President Felipe Calderon as the winner. Not only did the PAN manage to retain control of the governor's office,
but the party re-conquered the city halls of Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate as well.
The PAN also preserved its majority
in the state congress, upping its representation from 13 to 15 seats, while the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) remained with nine seats and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) dropped from two seats to one.
Two small parties that united with the PAN are also expected to gain seats in the state legislature.
Despite pre-election
polls that showed a neck-to-neck race between PAN gubernatorial candidate Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan and principal rival
Jorge Hank Rhon of the PRI-led So That You Can Live Better Alliance, the final tallies gave Osuna a large victory margin of
54,000 votes. "The people have spoken," declared a triumphant Osuna.
In the view of the PRI, however, the election
is far from over. State party leader Mario Madrigal Magaņa announced August 21 that the PRI and two allied parties would file
a legal challenge with the State Electoral Council that seeks to annul the election results.
Ironically, the PRI is
basing its case on alleged irregularities that were once perfected by Mexico's former ruling party. According to Madrigal,
police intimidation, vote-buying and the interference of PAN Governor Eugenio Elorduy Walther during the political campaign
all made the election illegitimate.
"We have all the legal elements to challenge the elections with the goal of annulling
them," affirmed Madrigal.
For the moment, however, the PAN's August 5 victory is sweet relief for a political force
that is beset by divisions and which has lost key electoral strongholds in elections in Yucatan and Aguascalientes this year.
But Osuna and his fellow Panistas weren't the only winners. Good old-fashioned political trickery, lavish spending, negative
campaigning, voter abstention, and the seemingly unstoppable Elba Esther Gordillo emerged as the other prime victors.
Feared
violence did not materialize, but only days after the vote an armed commando briefly kidnapped Fausto Rodriguez, the secretary-general
of the Tijuana branch of the Mexican Green Party. Rodriguez had earlier resigned from the PRI-Green party alliance to protest
the imposition of candidates, but it is not known if his kidnapping was in any way connected to the election.
As usual,
most of the major US media were oblivious to the national and binational implications of a Mexican state election, even though
this one happened smack dab on the border of the most populous US state as unresolved immigration, border walls, narco-violence,
and trade and investment policy issues [help to] define US-Mexico relations. Running against the mainstream current was the
San Francisco Chronicle, which ran a full-page Election Day story that discussed gubernatorial hopeful Hank's alleged
ties to organized crime.
In the days preceding the vote, mutual accusations of unfair campaigning, vote buying, police
harassment, and government coercion at all levels splashed the headlines. On election eve, recordings of police band radio
conversations between Tijuana municipal police and alleged drug traffickers were leaked to the media and played on the airwaves.
Allegedly
in the possession of Mexico’s Attorney General (PGR) since 2004, it is uncertain how the federal police used the recordings prior
to their release three years later; the timing of the audiotapes' leaking, reminiscent of the Carlos Ahumada videotapes which
showed PRD politicians accepting suitcases of money in the run-up to the 2006 presidential elections, also raised intriguing,
still-unanswered questions. Coupled with PAN campaign spots that implied a connection between organized crime and former Tijuana
Mayor Jorge Hank, the tapes could have been a decisive last minute blow to the PRI's controversial standard-bearer.
The
leader of the massive national teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, landed another dizzying punch to Hank. Long embroiled
in a feud with key Hank backer and former PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo, Gordillo arrived on the scene to rally
her troops in a get-out-the-vote drive for Osuna. The PAN's victorious candidate recognized that hundreds of mobilized teachers
contributed to his victory.
For Gordillo, the political alliance with the PAN was a matter of expediency. "We aren't
Panistas, because we aren't conservatives, but we are at a special juncture," she argued just prior to the election.
Some
analysts noted the similarities between Gordillo's role in the Baja California election and her crucial support for PAN presidential
candidate Felipe Calderon in last year's election, a political move that is credited by some for pushing Calderon over the
top in his tight race with the PRD's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Undoubtedly, the PAN victory in Baja California reinforces
Gordillo's growing clout on the national political scene, and it will have repercussions in the struggle over the management
and direction of the National Education Ministry. In Baja California, Gordillo will likely wield influence through the teacher-based
National Alliance Party that teamed with the PAN in this year's electoral coalition.
Used to winning the spin of the
roulette wheel, losing PRI gubernatorial candidate and billionaire gaming businessman Jorge Hank expressed no public bitterness
at his defeat. Hank's conciliatory tone contrasted with state PRI leader Madrigal's vows to overturn the election.
Commenting
that "sleeping" would soothe his post-election blues, Hank blamed delays in opening voting booths, popular fear of violence
and voter abstention for his defeat. "I didn't know how to motivate the people," Hank conceded.
In one press conference
with reporters held at his "eccentric offices" outside the Agua Caliente racetrack, Hank waxed philosophical about the election
outcome. Speaking in a room furnished with Mayan effigies in sexual positions, draped animal parts and a large surrealist
painting by artist Napiq that depicts scenes of Hank as a clown and a hooded man preparing to decapitate a smiling woman,
Hank vowed he'd remain a loyal "soldier" in the PRI's army.
Absenteeism was another big winner on August 5. Only about
41 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, a figure that was slightly better than the 36.5 percent turnout in the last
state election held in 2001. Nonetheless, the 2001 and 2007 state elections registered sharp drops in voter participation
since 1995, when fully 63 percent of the electorate showed up to cast ballots.
Gaston Luken, an ex-president of the
state election council, and Victor Alejandro Espinoza, a political scientist with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, agreed
that widespread public rejection of the candidates and their political projects factored into this year's low turnout. Both
Luken and Espinoza identified migration as another key element in explaining the poor voter numbers. They contended that Baja
California's location on the US border lures a constant stream of potential voters across the frontier before election time.
Historically
lacking a significant presence in Baja California, the center left PRD party was relegated to an even more obscure political
corner in this year's election. Postulating Jaime Hurtado de Mendoza as its gubernatorial candidate, the PRD only managed
to pull in about 2 percent of the votes. Once again, the party failed to capitalize at the state level on the multiparty alliance
and grassroots movement that characterized Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's bid for president last year.
The Convergence
Party, which supported Lopez Obrador in 2006 and is currently allied with the PRD in the federal congress, ran a woman
for governor, Mercedes Maciel, who threw her support behind Hank at the last minute. Jaime Martinez Veloz, a columnist for
Mexico City's La Jornada daily, assessed the August 5 election as a wake-up call for the border left.
"The left has
the moral obligation to undertake a profound internal reflection of its role and its place in the border problematic," Martinez
wrote. "Reality obliges us to come up with an articulated program that puts the concerns and problems of the citizenry at
the center of our political activity. Otherwise we will not have a future in the societies of the northern part of the country."
Nationally,
the PRD's embarrassing Baja California performance is likely to wind up as more loose ammunition in the party's internal battle
between followers of Lopez Obrador and centrist politicians who are more inclined to negotiating with President Calderon.
Both sides can claim grist from the crumbling Baja California mill.
Beyond the post-campaign soul-searching and political
reshuffling, problems of poverty, migration, drug addiction and criminal violence will remain burning issues in the immediate
future. On the issue of criminal violence, Governor-elect Osuna pledged to draft a new public safety plan and request "the
intervention of the army when necessary."
Osuna's victory means that the PAN,
which wrested control of the governor's office from the PRI in the historic 1989 election, will complete a 24-year reign of
power in Baja California when Osuna's term ends in 2013. In Mexican political terms, the PAN's Baja California dynasty
is only comparable in longevity to the decades-long rule of the PRI, or the reign of dictator Porfirio Diaz in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
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Sources: Proceso/Apro, August
7 and 8, 2007. Articles by Jose Gil Olmos and Rosalia Vergara. El Sur, August 20, 2007. Article by Juan Angulo Osorio.
La Jornada, August 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 17, 2007. Articles by Antonio Heras, Alonso Urrutia, Jaime Martinez Veloz, and editorial
staff. El Universal, August 1, 7, 8, 11, 13, 19, 21, 2007. Articles by Rosa Maria Mendez Fierros, Marcelo Beyliss, Jorge
Zepeda Patterson, and editorial staff. El Diario de Juarez, August 6, 2007. San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2007.
Article by Gunther Hamm. Univision, July 31, 2007.
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las
Cruces, New Mexico
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(Reprinted with authorization
from Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source. FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/)
Translation FNS
