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 Editorials | At Issue | June 2005 
Rearranging the Mexican Cabinet
 Carlos Luken - Mexidata.Info
Participants and onlookers alike greeted the June 1 resignation of Santiago Creel, Mexico's secretary of government and the Vicente Fox administration's top political operative, with mixed emotions.
The move signaled a transition that, if successful, will guarantee continuity for Fox's policies. But it brings on yet another period of disconcerting Cabinet adjustments.
On the politics side: Prior to Creel's stepping down, the National Action Party, or PAN (the party of Fox and Creel), had announced its convention schedule and rules for the coming nomination of its 2006 presidential candidate.
Such PAN announcements once were little more than token news items - an opposition party's quasi-ceremony to select a sacrificial lamb to be defeated by the ruling, autocratic and all-powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
With the PAN in power, and with Mexico having developed into a three-party democracy, things have changed. The PAN has four solid pre-candidates, all of whom have served in Fox's Cabinet.
Compared with the experience of the PRI, whose 71-year reign up until 2000 gave it the wherewithal to conduct smooth presidential transitions and well-managed power transfers, negotiated by internal coalitions and orchestrated in near-secrecy, the PAN's inexperience is showing.
For example, in a recent and regrettable speech, PAN President Manuel Espino issued an ultimatum for Fox to sack non-party Cabinet executives and replace them with PAN members, throwing down a gauntlet that Fox subtly evaded.
Many political analysts are now apprehensive that Espino's suggestion, although apparently disregarded, could trigger a PAN stampede to and from Cabinet positions and elections. This could create a domino effect - and a new period of discontinuity and lack of coordination - as new appointees reshuffle their teams to bring in new, loyal but untested executives at a time when concentrated efforts focusing on immediate results are needed.
The departure of Santiago Creel represents a major loss to the Fox government. As Mexico's interior minister, he steered a very difficult course for democracy in a country that, while desperately wanting democracy, has worked to snuff out its existence.
In a Mitofsky Consulting firm poll, taken immediately after Creel announced his resignation, the PAN hopeful shot up to a 51 percent favorable rating among PAN members. Each of his three party rivals - Felipe Calderon, a former energy secretary and PAN president; Chihuahua Gov. Francisco Barrio; and Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Alberto Cardenas, a past governor of Jalisco - scored 8 percent.
Cardenas has announced that he will resign before Wednesday, presenting Fox with another Cabinet opening that he will have to fill.
Considering party preferences rather than individual pre-candidates, the Mitofsky poll shows similar and longstanding electoral predilections among hard-core party members. The so-called hard vote distribution is fairly even, with the PRI having 25 percent and the PAN and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) each having 20 percent.
Among PRI members, 49 percent favored party President Roberto Madrazo, and a combined total of 42 percent preferred one of the party's other six candidates. Whereas 51 percent of PAN members said they would choose Creel, 91 percent of PRD members said they support Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Unless all six Madrazo challengers unite to back one of their own, and rally the PRI membership accordingly, Madrazo probably will be the PRI candidate. Creel supposedly can withstand a coalition among his three opponents and still win the PAN nomination. And Lopez Obrador of the PRD, to all intents and purposes, is running unopposed.
Mexicans expect a conflictive presidential campaign and a problematical election. Between now and July 2, 2006, matters could be further complicated by an unpredictable political environment due to an inexperienced Cabinet. |
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