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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2006 
Mexico's Former Ruling Party Stumbles on the Road Back to Power
 James C. McKinley Jr. - NYTimes
| | Roberto Madrazo, the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate for president, hopes the party's loyal supporters will prove the polls wrong. (Felipe Courzo/Reuters) |
Chihuahua, Mexico — A year ago, the party machine that ruled Mexico for seven decades appeared poised for a comeback. It had won a series of important city and state elections, frustrated President Vicente Fox's legislation in Congress and still boasted the best get-out-the-vote operation in Mexico.
But today, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is deeply divided after a bloody, internal fight for the presidential nomination. Most polls show that the chosen candidate, Roberto Madrazo, the former governor of Tabasco and the party boss who engineered recent victories, appears to be floundering in third place in a three-way race.
His public image is so negative that he has started using only his first name in the headlines of campaign posters and pamphlets, his aides said, to try to warm up his image and distance himself from the taint of his last name.
Campaigning through the cattle country and badlands of this northern state this week, Mr. Madrazo dismissed his position in the polls with the standard response that the only poll that mattered was the one taken on Election Day. In an interview, he predicted the party's legendary machinery would go into action as the July 2 vote drew closer and would get its supporters to the voting booths.
Others in the party, however, say Mr. Madrazo is the problem. His relentless pursuit of the nomination in the face of stiff opposition from other party leaders has left a trail of wreckage, political strategists say. One important union leader bolted to another party, and the fight with Mr. Madrazo demolished the reputation of a former governor of Mexico State, an important battleground.
"I think he's harvesting a long career of being an infighter and someone without a lot of warmth or mercy," said Dan Lund, a pollster here.
Founded during the Mexican Revolution in the early part of the last century, the PRI started out as a progressive party but became corrupt. Leaders got rich in office. Critics were silenced. Dirty election tactics kept the party in power. In its heyday, it was known as a perfect dictatorship in democratic clothing, each president handing power to his handpicked successor.
Mr. Madrazo, 53, has been a polarizing figure in the party, with a reputation as a shark in back-room dealings. His critics say he is a classic old-fashioned Mexican politician close to the party's old guard, willing to menace enemies, buy friends and resort to gifts to get the party faithful to the polls.
He says the truth is more complex. Like his father, Carlos A. Madrazo, who died in a plane crash when Mr. Madrazo was 17, he has always been a party rebel and sees himself as a reformer. He did the unthinkable in 1999 — refusing a direct order from President Ernesto Zedillo to step down as governor of Tabasco and take a cabinet post.
That defiance cost Mr. Madrazo the nomination in 2000, when Mr. Zedillo changed the party's rules to benefit another candidate, Francisco Labastida, who went on to lose to President Vicente Fox and thus end the PRI's long hold on power.
After the debacle of that race, Mr. Madrazo skillfully seized control of the party. He can take credit for rebuilding its popularity, winning governorships in Nuevo Leon and Nayarit, as well as taking back several major cities, among them Tijuana and Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
"This PRI is not the same," Mr. Madrazo said in an interview between campaign stops. "It's changed. We've learned from our mistakes. And the PRI of 2005 has nothing to do with the PRI of 2000. Now you have a new generation of politicians and they have results."
Unfortunately for Mr. Madrazo, a great party boss does not necessarily make a great candidate. He has little charisma.
A wiry man burdened with a soft, raspy voice, he runs several miles every morning before dawn on a treadmill and competes regularly in marathons. On campaign stages, he sometimes seems to shrink into his clothes and looks like an actor trying to play a physically larger person.
His doctor says he is obsessive about what he eats. He usually takes just a few polite bites of the Mexican food offered at campaign stops, then eats all-bran bars, yogurt and fruit in between. He also has the habit of changing his shirt after every appearance.
Mr. Madrazo's stump speech revolves around the idea that ordinary Mexican workers have not benefited from Mr. Fox's handling of the economy. He offers a rambling list of proposals to create more good jobs, boost Mexico's competitiveness, decentralize the federal government, cut energy costs, build roads and "go after" criminals.
"We are already fed up with the inefficiency, the ineffectiveness, the ineptitude of this government," he said in a speech to union members, oil rig workers and cattle ranchers in Camargo, a sea of white cowboy hats and leathery faces. "They don't have any ideas. They don't have any plan. They live by improvisation."
The speech often elicits polite applause from the people who come to his rallies, most of them bused in by unions closely allied with the party. The discourse left some of the rural supporters in Chihuahua with puzzled looks, crossed arms and glazed eyes. When asked, several voters said they were supporting Mr. Madrazo simply out of loyalty to the party.
"We trust in him because it's our party," said Jose Flores, a civil servant in Chihuahua after one of Mr. Madrazo's speeches. "Our obligation is to go out and get out the vote."
Mr. Madrazo casts himself as more competent than his competitors — Felipe Calderón of the right-wing National Action Party and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution. He asserts he can get things done and that he has a plan to turn the economy around. He harps on the sluggish growth under Mr. Fox, even though Mexico's foreign debt and deficit are under control.
"I think the macroeconomy is going very well," Mr. Madrazo said in an interview. "But it's not reflected in the family economy. Among the people, when you talk to them, you see the loss of jobs is permanent. There is no creation of more good quality, long-term jobs."
During this campaign swing, Mr. Madrazo admitted he has the reputation of a no-holds-barred party boss, but called it "a distorted image," a result of his crusade to remake the party. He argued that this image did not prevent him from winning election to Congress three times, the Tabasco governor's race in 1992 and the party presidency in 2002, all open contests.
In the end, his lack of charisma and his tough-guy reputation may not matter much, his aides say. He and his advisers note that the PRI regularly turns out at least 10 million voters, especially in rural areas, and they tend to vote a straight party line.
The party boasts an extensive organization in all states and cities, an army of more than a million militant members willing to knock on doors and drag the faithful to the polls. The other two parties have nothing like this network.
So as all three candidates search for a way to put together about 15 million votes, the magic threshold that put Mr. Fox into office, Mr. Madrazo is betting his organization can muster another 5 million from undecided voters and people who have become disenchanted with Mr. Fox's National Action Party, whose changes he helped sink in Congress.
"We have a hard vote that other parties don't have," Mr. Madrazo said. "But it won't be enough, we have to go also for part of the switch voter, which you move with proposals, not with confrontation." |
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