Copyright 2000 www.cosmopolis.ch Louis Gerber All rights
reserved.
The elections in Mexico
After 71 years
in power, the PRI has lost the
presidency
The simple majority in the first and only tour is
decisive in Mexico:
Fox 43%, Labastida 35%, Cárdenas 16%. Book
your hotel in Mexiko online.
Article added on July 14, 2000
Vicente Fox
Born in Mexico City in 1942 as the second of nine sons, Vicente Fox grew
up in León, Guanajuato. He went back to the capital to study business
at the Universidad Iberoamericana (directed by Jesuits). He continued his
studies at Harvard University (U.S.) and later became a manager at Coca
Cola. Fox rose to the position of president for the Mexico and Latin
America division of the company. At the end of the 1980s, he joined the
Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). In 1988, Fox was elected for the PAN into
the regional government and, in 1995, became governor of the state of Guanajuato.
On July 2, 2000, the 58-year-old and two-meter tall Vicente Fox, who is
known for his straightforward talking, which earned him the image as a
right-wing populist, managed to win the presidential election in Mexico by
a margin of 7%.
The elections
Since 1929 the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)
had been in power in Mexico. Therefore, Vicente Fox called the country
"PRIson". Others named the regime the perfect dictatorship. After 71
years, the PRI will have to hand over the presidency to the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN),
a center-right party. The clear result came as a surprise since, until the
last moment, the polls predicted a head-to-head race. The PRI's main
"argument" was stability - 80% of the voters indicated this was
their primary concern. Therefore, PRI and government
officials tried to convince the voters that they would lose
access to welfare and farm programs if Vicente won. In 1994, this recipe
proved to be successful.
The second obstacle to a win by Fox was the
third candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. He is a tireless crusader for
democracy in Mexico and the leader of the left-wing opposition party
Partido de la Revolución Democratica (PRD). He
refused to withdraw from the presidential race because, in his eyes, the
end of the PRI regime should not be made possible by abandoning the
left-wing ideas. His PRD is nationalist and against free trade, which
comes as no surprise if one remembers that the party is a reformist
offspring of the PRI. In 1988, Cárdenas
run for the first time for president and - according to most observers -
lost only due to massive electoral fraud by and in favor of the PRI. In 1994,
Cárdenas finished third. His revenge came in 1997 with the win in the
election for mayor in the capital, Mexico City. Cárdenas' popularity is
partly due to the fact that he is the son of former popular president Lázaro
Cárdenas (1934-40). Although still respected by many in Mexico, Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas has not understood that the world has changed since the late
1980s and that socialist ideas and recipes no longer have the public's favor. Ironically, he accused Fox of not being different from the PRI,
by not realizing, that he himself had become an obstacle to change.
Francisco Labastida, the candidate of the
PRI, is an old apparatchik who owes his career to the party and,
therefore, was no credible symbol for a democratic and economic change in
Mexico. It came as no surprise that towards the end of his campaign, he
searched more and more the help of the dinosaurs, as the conservatives
within his party are called. Vicente Fox accurately described the
situation as one with the dinosaurs afraid of a climatic change (which
would made them extinct).
The erosion of the PRI system (including
the party, the state and the economy) began as early as 1989, when, for
the first time, a PAN candidate became governor of Baja California.
The uprising of the "Zapatistas" eroded the authority of the PRI
furthermore and, in 1994, the NAFTA free trade agreement also favored
change. Three years later, the PRI lost its absolute majority in the Chamber of
Deputies as well as the post of major of Mexico City. And now, in the year
2000, the party has finally lost the presidency and also the absolute majority
in the Senate. In the capital, the PRI holds only 5 of 66 local mandates
(PAN 24 + the mayor, PRD 26, Green Party 10).
Due to a bizarre clause in constitution, President Zedillo (PRI), a man of reform, will
govern until December. Afterwards, Fox will have to talk to all political
forces, since his non-socialist middle-class coalition (PAN and Green
Party) did not win a majority either in the Lower House or in the Senate. The
PRI era of más de lo mismo (more of the same) is definitively
over, but at the same time a culture of cooperation needs to
be created in order to lead Mexico into a prosperous and calm future. The
independent electoral commission, which supervised the presidential
elections, worked in an admirable way and could serve as an example to the
new government and parliament.
Fox has a religious education and his PAN
is a conservative-Catholic force. It remains to be seen whether the political change will, beside
economic and social reforms, lead to a cultural-religious struggle. Anyway, Vicente Fox is
taking on a heavy burden. On
the positive side: the economy is booming, with a growth rate of about 8%
right now and growth of 5 to 7% forecast for the year 2000. In the last years,
foreign direct investment amounted to about $10 billion per year. The rising oil
prices lowered Mexico's trade deficit. On the mixed and negative side:
Inflation is about 9% and the peso is weak. Fox will have to fight
corruption and criminality. The drug trade is still
flourishing. The backwardness of the country, where about 40 million poor
people live with $2 a day, is a serious problem. Vicente Fox and his
coalition have no time to celebrate their victory.
