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 Editorials | March 2006 
Who Will be Presidential Marathon Man?
 Oakland Ross - Toronto Star
| | Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo greets supporters during a rally Thursday March 9 2006, in Guadalajara City, Mexico. (AP/Guillermo Arias) |
Some might call it panic.
Only a few weeks into Mexico's marathon presidential race, and already certain stalwarts of the country's pre-eminent vote-getting machine are having major misgivings about their man.
In fact, some senior voices in the venerable Institutional Revolutionary Party — known as the PRI, its Spanish acronym — have begun calling in public for the political interment of one Roberto Madrazo.
His crime?
The former governor of Tabasco state is running an uninspiring third in what effectively is a three-man race for the country's greatest political prize — the keys to Los Pinos, the Mexican presidential palace, which once resided, as if by birthright, in the PRI's collective pocket.
"He probably wasn't the best choice," says a U.S. official in Mexico City, echoing a not uncommon view. "He's hurting his party."
Madrazo's party, or factions of it, are feeling the same way.
Former interior minister Manuel Bartlett Diaz, now a federal senator, is merely the most prominent PRI insider to have plumped in public recently for replacing Madrazo.
Few expect the candidate to step aside, no matter what the opinion polls say. But these are the early stages of a very long race, one that won't end until voting day on July 2, and much could still change.
Fairly or not, Madrazo is seen by many in this country as a throwback to the PRI's darker past, when party bosses ran Mexico as a kind of corporate dictatorship, hoarding political power for seven uninterrupted decades, from 1929 until 2000.
Although it lost the presidency six years ago, the party remains a powerful force.
"The PRI still has a well-established machinery across the country," says a senior diplomat in Mexico City. "They can mobilize votes."
Unfortunately for priistas — as PRI supporters are known — the practical ability to mobilize votes no longer seems to be quite enough, not in a nation fumbling toward genuine democracy after decades of de facto one-party rule.
"Now it's important to have a popular candidate who is on a good team," says Jean François Prud'homme, a Canadian who is the academic director of the elite Colegio de Mexico and a veteran observer of Mexican politics.
"Madrazo may be one of the PRI's big problems."
Perhaps an even bigger problem is represented by a political phenomenon known here by the euphonious and now nearly ubiquitous acronym — AMLO.
Those four letters are shorthand for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
After a hugely successful stint as Mexico City's mayor, the silver-maned populist is setting the pace in the presidential race, wearing the gold colours of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.
After a brief dip in February, AMLO's advantage has widened again in the most recent polls, and he enjoys a lead of roughly a dozen percentage points over Felipe Calderon, candidate of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, which wrested the presidency from the PRI six years ago.
At present, the race is regarded as Lopez Obrador's to lose.
Even those who should perhaps be most wary of the leftist champion seem compelled to portray him in admiring terms.
"A very clever grassroots politician," says the U.S. official. "A very good organizer. He's very good with the media. He's got the common touch."
AMLO's big challenge now is to find a way to translate the common touch into the Mexican presidency — without the benefit of a nationally representative political party.
"The PRD is simply non-existent in many areas," says Homero Campa, a senior editor at the weekly newsmagazine Proceso.
Of course, the same is true of the PAN, and yet that did not prevent its standard-bearer, a former Coca-Cola executive named Vicente Fox, from battling his way to the presidency six years ago.
Besides, a populist current is vibrating through Latin America these days, one that already has installed leftist presidents in national palaces from Argentina to Bolivia.
That trend is likely to be reinforced by a succession of presidential elections scheduled this year in other countries of the region.
Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez, the voluble and very left-wing ruler of oil-rich Venezuela, continues to wage his one-man war on neo-liberalism, globalization and just about anything else that bears a trace of Washington's imprimatur.
Up for re-election in November, the former army officer is all but assured of victory — which should please Fidel Castro of Cuba, while further irking a certain Texan by the name of George W. Bush.
What, if anything, does all of this mean for Mexico?
Well, as former U.S. president Bill Clinton might have observed: Es la economía, estúpido.
It's the economy, stupid.
"The triumph of the left in Latin America is the result of economic disenchantment," says Campa. "I don't think, in Mexico, that we are outside that disenchantment."
The liberal, pro-U.S. policies championed by Fox during the past six years have produced sundry benefits for Mexico, including greater openness in government, significant advances against corruption and the establishment of a professional civil service.
But Mexicans thought Fox was going to find them decent jobs — and that, he has largely failed to do.
"Fox promised the moon," says the U.S. official. "He hasn't been able to deliver."
In fact, the country's chronic unemployment problems have only grown worse.
This does not mean that Mexico — a charter member of the North American Free Trade Agreement and among the largest mercantile nations in the world — is about to become another leftward-toppling Latin American domino.
"Clearly, there has been a movement toward the left in Latin America in the last few years," says the senior diplomat.
"How much influence does that have on Mexico? I don't think it has much."
There is no guarantee, in any case, that AMLO's lead will hold until July.
Calderon, the PAN candidate, is lurking within striking distance, and Mexico may well buck the Latin American populist trend, instead emulating its NAFTA partners, the United States and Canada, by electing another fiscal conservative.
A one-time banking executive, Calderon managed to win his party's nomination for the presidency despite the opposition of Fox, who is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election.
This odd conjunction of circumstances enables Calderon to run both for and against his own party's record.
But he has a long, hard road ahead. In last Sunday's local elections in a key, largely urban state — Estado de Mexico — his party finished in third place, while Lopez Obrador's PRD vaulted ahead, very nearly outpolling the PRI, in what had been viewed as a fortress of PRI support.
No matter which candidate triumphs in July, however, few observers expect truly dramatic policy changes, if only because the U.S. relationship looms so large for this land.
AMLO might push economic nationalism a little harder, observers here say, but Mexico is not Venezuela — it's much more dependent on the U.S.A., for one thing — and none of the candidates would likely risk inflicting serious damage to relations with Washington.
"In no case would they go the route of confrontation," says Campa.
Perhaps, then, the most significant aspect of the race for the Mexican presidency in the year 2006 is that there is any doubt at all about its outcome.
A dozen years ago, there would not have been.
Some might call that progress — and they would be right. |
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