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 Editorials | At Issue | June 2006 
Mexico Awaits Next President, Departure From the Crossroads
 Traci Carl - Associated Press
| | Outgoing President Vicente Fox has not created the millions of jobs he promised and wages are still low. |
Democracy has been good to Mexico. It shows in shiny new cars bought with low-interest loans, government-subsidized housing projects stacked like dominoes along hillsides, and a raucous political system in which everyone has a voice. Gone are the rigged elections, the rubberstamp Congress, the boom-and-bust peso crises. During the past decade, Mexico’s political evolution has broken up monopolies, made politicians more responsive to their public and attracted foreign investors ranging from Citibank to Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
The new era was ushered in by President Vicente Fox’s historic 2000 election, the most democratic in Mexican history. Six years later, as he prepares to step down, he promises the election of his successor today will be freer and cleaner still.
But democracy has had its dark side, too — congressional chaos that stalled needed reforms and left a nation full of disgruntled voters, some of whom are nostalgic for the old authoritarian system that at least got things done.
In the final week of campaigning — amid the attack ads, high-octane rhetoric and streets blitzed with election banners — voters are torn evenly between Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who offers himself as a savior of the poor; and Felipe Calderon, a conservative who trusts the markets to keep living standards rising. Friday polls show the two about even.
The vote will determine whether Mexico latches onto South America’s leftward trend or deepens free-market reforms and its already close alliance with the United States.
Most voters have been following the World Cup soccer tournament more closely than the campaign. By now, Mexicans have experienced enough democracy and heard enough politicians’ promises to be a bit blase about them.
Six years ago, national euphoria greeted Fox’s victory, which dealt a sudden, surprising end to 71 years of rule by the iron-fisted Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Mexicans believed anything was possible. Many waited for the country to finally trade its riches — oil and mineral reserves, miles of lovely coastline, an underused work force — for full membership among First World nations.
Reality has disappointed them. The economy is stable, thanks to a strong central bank and Mexico’s integration into the world economy, but Fox failed to create the millions of jobs he promised and wages are still too low — minimum wage is 47.05 pesos ($4) a day — for many to live on.
But Fox’s time is up. Unable to seek an additional term, he plans to retire after his replacement is inaugurated Dec. 1.
Enter Calderon, of Fox’s National Action Party, and Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, polar opposites waging a no-holds-barred battle with charges of influencepeddling and stealing government funds for their campaigns.
Calderon says Lopez Obrador would be dangerous for Mexico and likens him to Venezuela’s populist, anti-American President Hugo Chavez.
Lopez Obrador says Calderon, a bespectacled career politician who served as Fox’s energy secretary, represents more of the same ineffective bureaucracy that caters to the rich.
A poll published Friday by Reforma newspaper gave Lopez Obrador 36 percent, Calderon 34 percent and Roberto Madrazo, of the PRI, 25 percent. Twelve percent were undecided. The poll questioned 2,100 people between June 17-19 and had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points. Other polls Friday gave roughly similar results.
With the campaign slogan "Smile: We’re going to win," Lopez Obrador, who gained popularity as Mexico City mayor, has crisscrossed the country, adorned with flowers and basking in the adulation of thousands of supporters.
Calderon has switched modes from stiff to commanding yet easygoing, greeted by supporters who raise both arms in the air — his "clean hands" slogan.
Some fear violence if there isn’t a clear winner, as happened in 1994 after Lopez Obrador narrowly lost the governor’s seat of his native state, Tabasco, to Madrazo. Lopez Obrador refused to accept the results and began governing from the streets, undermining Madrazo’s already weak government.
Lopez Obrador, 52, is quick to blame his losses on secretive plots by unnamed dark forces, and to fight back unconventionally. As mayor a year ago, when a legal dispute threatened to keep him from running for the presidency, he mobilized millions to protest and refused to accept a court order to stop construction of a road.
The Fox administration dropped the case.
"(Lopez Obrador) doesn’t just represent the masses; he incarnates their struggle," said George Grayson, an expert on Mexico at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "Just as they have to fight for every inch they gain, he is there fighting. So he is their champion."
Many among Mexico’s elite worry that Lopez Obrador would bankrupt the nation with his extravagant pension and public-works proposals.
Others, however, say the danger is imaginary, likening him to Brazil’s fiery union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Investors feared Silva would plunge the nation into an economic meltdown, but he embraced conservative economic policies that stoked a strong comeback for Latin America’s largest economy.
One thing seems certain. While some voters may miss the PRI’s can-do ways, Mexico doesn’t appear ready to give the party a second chance. |
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