Monday, July 19, 2010
The Ongoing Process of Democratic Transition in Mexico
By Patrick Corcoran
This past July 2 marked the tenth anniversary
of Vicente Fox's election to the Mexican presidency, generally considered the moment that the nation definitively broke with
its authoritarian past and embraced a fully democratic future.
Two days after the anniversary, Mexico celebrated
another round of elections, choosing the next governors in 12 different states, as well as scores of other state and local
officials.
In a number of ways, the campaigns conspired
to demonstrate how much the present political landscape still resembles the PRI era. For starters, the former ruling party
has for the past two years been far and away the strongest political force in Mexico, which it again demonstrated by winning
nine of the gubernatorial races. Furthermore, the PAN and the PRD joined forces in a handful of gubernatorial races, a throwback
to the cross-ideology opposition alliances during the days of PRI hegemony.
The murder of priísta Rodolfo Torre
Cantú, the overwhelming gubernatorial favorite in Tamaulipas, called to mind another dark element from the PRI era: the frequent
application of political violence, which previously culminated in the murder of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio
in 1994. Of course, the culprits here are presumed to be an organized crime group rather than political adversaries,
but that’s small comfort to Mexicans who feel like their country is spinning out of control.
Given the above panorama, it's not particularly
surprising that Mexicans are less than thrilled with the state of their nation. According to a recent report from Latinobarómetro,
in Latin America only three nations' residents have a more negative outlook of their countries respective paths than do Mexicans.
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a former presidential
candidate and a figure vital to the democratic transition, reiterated a common narrative among the commentariat when he complained
during the week before the elections that the changes of the post-PRI were only superficial, and that Mexico’s “political
project remains the same.”
But a closer look at the election demonstrates
that Mexico has indeed changed. The most important result of the July 4 elections was the defeat of the PRI in Oaxaca and
Puebla, two states where the PRI had been in power for eight decades.
Both states were ruled by shamelessly authoritarian
governors. Puebla's Mario Marín deserves special mention: among his accomplishments, there are credible allegations that
he protected a child pornographer and subsequently kidnapped the journalist who broke the story. Plus, old audio tapes of
Marín having inappropriate conversations with a 17-year-old girl surfaced during the campaign. Puebla will surely miss him.
The defeats of the PRI in Puebla and Oaxaca
were, in other words, the unfinished business of the democratic transition.
In most of the country, however, the PRI
that has been ascendant since the election of Felipe Calderón is not the same animal that ran Mexico for most of the 20th
century, and in any event, the election raised serious questions about the certainty of the PRI’s return to the presidency
in 2012.
The PAN-PRD alliances’ three wins came
in spite of polls that promised either a clean sweep of the gubernatorial elections or something very close to it for the
PRI. Given the expectations, the trio of gubernatorial losses qualified as a significant defeat.
The alliances' relative success also means
that the strategy will almost certainly be dusted off for gubernatorial elections in 2011, including for in the State of Mexico.
Aside from being among the largest and most important states in the Republic, the State of Mexico race is significant because
of the incumbent governor: Enrique Peña Nieto.
Peña Nieto is the odds-on favorite to be
the PRI's presidential candidate in 2012, and would be, according to preliminary polls, the overwhelming favorite to win the
post presently held by Felipe Calderón. Should he fail to hand his seat over to another priísta, however, it would
be a major knock to his prestige and therefore his presidential ambitions. Peña Nieto says he doesn't fear the alliances,
but he probably should: his vote total in 2005 did not exceed the combine numbers for the PAN and PRD candidates. A candidate
less appealing than Peña Nieto will likely struggle to repeat his victory.
Beyond the impact in specific states, the
contests of last July 4 leave one gigantic question unanswered: has the PRI plateaued? There are compelling cases to be made
for both a positive and a negative answer. There's no question that the party remains stronger than the PAN or the PRD individually,
and, viewed objectively, taking 75 percent of the state houses against the combined force of their two primary opponents is
impressive.
But one can't shake the feeling that the
inevitable cycle of political popularity is starting to turn against the PRI. The losses of Puebla and Oaxaca were historic.
The party fell short of the results promised in pre-election polls. Its gubernatorial haul in the 2009 election was more impressive
than this year’s, and 2011’s could be more disappointing still.
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Patrick
Corcoran (corcoran25@hotmail.com) is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He
blogs at Gancho (http://www.ganchoblog.blogspot.com/).
