This was written in
September 1997. It will be updated soon.
To say that Mexico had a bad year is probably the political understatement of the year. Despite some stabilization of the economy after the Òpeso crisisÓ of 1994-5, the Mexican elite suffered problems on just about every other political front, culminating in what amounts to the PRIÕs first defeat at the polls on 6 July. The PRIÕs hold on power had been weakening for some time, but there is now actually a reasonable chance that it will lose both the presidency and control of the Congress as a whole when the next elections are held in 2000.
The economic indicators are better. Unemployment and inflation are both down. MexicoÕs balance of payments and debt situation have improved. The first preliminary studies have suggested that NAFTA has helped some areas of the economy. But even economically, the overall news is not good, since the longer term problems of underdevelopment and poverty remain as serious as they were before the peso crisis.
The governmentÕs immediate problems lie elsewhere, however. The most important of these are the ever widening corruption revelations which now include drugs as well as the economic bribes, political fraud, and other issues of past years.
In a highly controversial move, the US government certified that Mexico was an ally in the war against drugs. Nonetheless, the country has become a major transshipment point for cocaine and other drugs heading to the US and Europe. More importantly for our purposes, it became abundantly clear this year that some highly placed PRI officials were involved in the drug trade while many more must have turned a blind eye to it.
The corruption scandals reached the very top of the party and, hence, the government. Former President Carlos Salinas has been forced into self-imposed exile following the arrest of his brother and many former members of his administration. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the newly appointed drug czar, was forced to resign when it was revealed that he was taking payoffs from one of the leading drug barons, Amado Carillo.
All this served as the backdrop to the most remarkable election campaign in Mexico in this century. If nothing else, it was the most honest in part because it was the most expensive. President ZedilloÕs government had created an independent electoral commission and instituted a variety of other mechanisms designed to minimize electoral fraud that ended up making the 1997 mid-term election more costly than the 1996 US presidential contest. Among other things, voters received sealed identity cards, had their fingers stamped with indelible ink, and then desposited their votes into tamper-proof ballot boxes.
The election was a tremendous setback for the PRI. Given MexicoÕs complicated electoral law, the PRI would have had to have captured 42% of the vote to gain a majorette of the seats in the lower house, and the preliminary results in the following table show it fell far short of that (final figures for the number of seats and exact vote totals were not yet available when this was written). It also lost two of six governorships being contested.
Most importantly of all, PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas won landslide as mayor of Mexico City in the first time that office has been directly elected since 1928. That makes the 63-year old son of the most popular president in Mexican history a strong candidate for the 2000 presidential election. Many observers at the time felt that Cardenas had actually won in 1988 but was denied his victory only because of massive fraud which gave Carlos Salinas his slim Òmajority.Ó Even though the PRD and PAN came in neck and neck this year, Cardenas is currently tipped as the front runner to challenge the PRI in 2000, not Vincente Fox, the PANÕs likely candidate.
Preliminary Results and Projections
Three Main Parties
House of Representatives Election
6 July 1997
(based on 87% of polling places)
|
Party |
% vote |
Seats (n=500) |
|
PRI |
38.9 |
239 |
|
PRD |
27.0 |
125 |
|
PAN |
25.6 |
122 |
In the immediate aftermath of the election, President Zedillo set a conciliatory tone and even seemed to welcome CardenasÕ victory. It is certainly the case that Zedillo forced through the electoral reforms and may well have instigated the anticorruption campaigns and thus cold well prove to be MexicoÕs Gorbachev. However, the PRI remains a powerful and conservative political force, and no one in his or her right mind is predicting what will happen between now and the end of the century with any degree of certainty.
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