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 Editorials | June 2006 
Mexican Voters' Dilemma
 Jose de la Isla - Hispanic Link News
Two days before the United States celebrates its independence on the Fourth of July, Mexico will conduct its second national election since the beginning of its new democracy. Some 71 million Mexican voters will select their leader for the next six years.
In the second and final debate between Mexico's three presidential candidates on June 6, surveys showed a virtual dead-heat between Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN) and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).
Roberto Madrazo, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate, is running a not-too-distant but still embarrassing third. After 70 consecutive years in power, the PRI lost in 2000 to PAN, led by departing incumbent Vicente Fox.
The trio's campaigns have been shaped by the underlying issue about Mexicans migrating abroad to find work, and with it, the country's relationship with the United States and Canada. The PRD's Lopez Obrador recently proposed to increase the living standard, an income supplement program for low-wage workers. The PRI's Madrazo compared it to his own plan, while Calderon has offered to cut taxes mainly to help the middle class. The country's political and economic experts have jumped in, mostly to call Lopez Obrador's plan too costly and inflationary for the country's slowly advancing economy.
The big question for July 2 is which candidate, as the country's new president, can best deal with issues that cross over to the rest of North America. Neither the United States nor Canada is well served when Mexico, as a North American partner, lags behind the rest of the continent.
Paradoxically, Mexico has already proven itself as an emerging economy. To put things in perspective, it is the 15th largest world economy and a partner in the second largest regional world trade zone. It has a free trade agreement with the European Union and is a leader for proposed development in the Caribbean and Central America.
In this capacity, the next president will have a key role to play in how the economies of those two regions develop. Only days ago, as partners in the new Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), presidents in those two regions met with Caribbean collaborators and Colombia in the Dominican Republic to look into constructing an oil refinery to help meet the energy needs of Mesoamerica. In a role like this, Mexico is neither tiny nor insignificant.
The same holds true for NAFTA refinements. The trade agreement wasn't designed to keep terrorists from entering North America, but since 9/11 the United States government's focus has been more on security and less on trade. Leftover business about the environment and labor concerns has gone largely unanswered since 1993.
NAFTA's shortcomings are well understood. Some places and industries prospered; others did not. Overall job and income gains and losses — mainly gains — occurred in the United States and Canada. In Mexico, with large increases of working-age people entering the market, the gains weren't sufficient. Its next president will have a chance to negotiate for refinement in this scheme of things through the Security and Prosperity Alliance annexes to NAFTA.
Also of concern is whether Mexico's next president will be able to govern. Fox may have won in 2000, but the opposition dominated a congress that made many "foxista" reforms impossible to implement. It's one thing to run and quite another to govern.
As he assumes a leadership role in North America, the new president needs to be a head-banger, coalition-crafter and innovative policy-shaper to get his reforms through the Chamber of Deputies and Senate. Voters in Mexico are asking themselves lots of questions about which candidate can best build a prosperous, truly democratic nation. The rest of us in North America and the Caribbean should pay close attention. Our future could be shaped in significant ways by what decision Mexican voters make July 2.
Jose de la Isla is a columnist for Hispanic Link News Service. |
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