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 News from Around the Americas | November 2005 
Absentee Voting Cited As Success In Mexico
 David Gaddis Smith - Union-Tribune
The most important accomplishment of Mexico's Congress has been its decision to allow absentee voting in next year's presidential election, a congressional leader said at an appearance in San Diego last week.
Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a Sonora congressman who served as governor of the border state from 1991 to 1997, said while the absentee voting law is "not the perfect system," it will allow all Mexicans to vote, no matter where they live.
"At last, we are together again," he said.
He said absentee voting, to be done by mail, may not have much effect on the 2006 election, but likely will have a greater impact in the 2009 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential vote.
Beltrones, a top coordinator in Congress for the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, spoke about governance in Mexico on Thursday at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego.
He said another major accomplishment for the Congress elected in 2003 was the reforms it made to Mexico's social security system. Beltrones cautioned that more needs to be done in this area, calling the country's pension system a financial "black hole."
Beltrones, 53, also touted recently passed congressional changes in tax rules for the state oil monopoly, Pemex, that will leave the company with more money to invest in maintenance, exploration and production. Beltrones said Pemex currently surrenders most of its profits to the government in the form of taxes.
But he said the three main parties in Congress have had a hard time working together and have been unable to pass other needed reforms.
He said Vicente Fox of the National Action Party was elected president in 2000 with 42 percent of the vote but with a popularity rating of 80 percent. "The 80 percent masked the problem. People thought 80 percent was enough for governability." It wasn't, Beltrones said.
No party has a congressional majority, and Beltrones said it was unlikely any party will have one for years to come.
Beltrones suggested that a new institution be created that could include a Cabinet position, perhaps filled by someone from the Senate, to work with Congress and focus on reforms.
Beltrones, who plans to run to represent Sonora in the Senate next year, is a strong backer of Roberto Madrazo for the presidency. Madrazo, a former governor of Tabasco state and former leader of the PRI, is expected to easily beat law professor Everardo Moreno Cruz in today's primary for the PRI nomination.
A poll in Milenio newspaper last week put Madrazo 10 points behind Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the presidential nominee of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party. Felipe Calderón of Fox's party was 4 points behind Madrazo.
But Beltrones said the PRI's base of 9 million to 10 million voters gives the party a good shot at winning July 2. |
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