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 Editorials | Opinions | July 2006 
Mexican Party Lost Way, Former Members Claim
 Marion Lloyd - Houston Chronicle
| | PAN responds that charges of abandoned ideals are sour grapes. |
For 17 years Fernando Aboitiz helped the National Action Party transform itself from an idealistic underdog opposing an autocratic regime to Mexico's dominant political force in a multiparty democracy.
But along the way, Aboitiz says, the party lost its soul.
The son of Spanish immigrants, Aboitiz was drawn to the conservative National Action Party, the PAN, for its defense of family values and democracy. But he became disillusioned in 2004 by the party's drive to impeach leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, then Mexico City's mayor, over a land dispute. Aboitiz quit in May.
Discarded philosophy
Impeachment would have disqualified Lopez Obrador from this month's presidential election, which he lost by a whisker, according to disputed figures. Lopez Obrador and his supporters insist he won and are demanding a full recount.
"The PAN has lost its core philosophy — respect for the dignity of each human being," said Aboitiz, 32, who was elected on a PAN ticket in 2003 to govern one of Mexico City's 16 boroughs.
Other former party stalwarts agree.
"We've abandoned what set us apart from other parties: the belief in power as a means to serve," Tatiana Clouthier, a federal legislator whose father was the PAN's presidential candidate in 1988, wrote in resigning from the party. "Today, I think what they are looking for is power for power's sake."
PAN members dismiss such criticism is sour grapes. They argue that their party isn't losing its mission, but rather is maturing as a political force in a multiparty democracy, cutting deals and dealing with its foes.
National Action was founded by urban business owners and lawyers in 1939 to defend the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, whose powers had been dramatically curtailed by the 1917 constitution, and to work for democracy in Mexico.
For the next 50 years, party activists struggled against the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades. The PRI's grip on power was broken six years ago when Vicente Fox of the PAN won the presidency.
But to some dismayed party purists, the National Action Party began compromising its democratic credentials in the late 1980s by accepting public money for campaigns and making deals with the PRI in exchange for recognition of its city and state election victories.
"The PAN was formed to educate the Mexican people in civic culture," said Jorge Eugenio Ortiz, a former high-ranking party official who was part of a wave of dissidents who abandoned the party in 1992.
"If we had succeeded in that mission, we'd have clean elections, not the flood of dirty money we have today," he said.
Nonsense, say current National Action officials. They note that many ex-PAN members switched to other parties, which they say are even less squeamish about accepting public money.
"The PAN lives from member fees and public money, and the others live only from public money," said Juan Molinar, a prominent PAN member.
He accused Ortiz's group of quitting the PAN when they were passed up for candidacies. "They say the party lost its soul, but maybe they just lost what they wanted," he said.
Many analysts agree the PAN's transformation is natural as the party moves onto a more competitive stage.
Through its early decades, the PAN's motives were more ideological than pragmatic, they said. It was focused more on building democratic institutions — including helping Mexican women get full voting rights in 1953 — than onelections.
Now as it works to retain its hold on power, the party must appeal to a divided country where nearly half the people live in poverty and many distrust business and the church.
"They were an intellectual elitist club," said Kenneth Greene, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies Mexico's opposition parties. "It's easy to be ideologically pure when you can't win. When you have the possibility of winning, you have to appeal to broader groups of voters."
For Aboitiz and other critics, the PAN's long campaign against Lopez Obrador was the party's final undoing.
When its impeachment strategy failed to derail the leftist's presidential run, the party launched a series of attack ads this spring, accusing him of being a "danger to Mexico."
The campaign helped destroy the wide lead Lopez Obrador held in opinion polls until spring. Final results from the July 2 election give PAN candidate Felipe Calderon a 244,000-vote margin of victory. The PAN also won the largest share of congressional seats in history.
'The country is divided'
But to Aboitiz, the attacks on Lopez Obrador smacked of Mexico's autocratic past.
"I didn't think a campaign that was based on fear would bring anything positive," said Aboitiz, who quit the party at the height of the campaign against Lopez Obrador. "And effectively, that's what happened. The country is divided."
Lopez Obrador has accused the PAN of conspiring with Fox and big business interests to deny him the election. His Democratic Revolution Party has presented more than 800 pages of challenges to the Federal Electoral Tribunal, which must resolve the dispute and name a president by Sept. 6.
The PAN is fighting any attempt to change the election results, arguing that the tribunal and the autonomous Federal Electoral Institute are trustworthy and fully democratic.
"They're asking the authority to act discretionally," said Molinar, who is a top Calderon aide. "It's against the law."
But the party's critics say that by opposing a recount, the PAN risks further alienating millions who believe the elections were fraudulent.
Forty-eight percent of the population favor a recount, compared with 28 percent who oppose it, according to a survey published Thursday in Mexico City's El Universal newspaper.
"After 200 years of history in Mexico, we've come back to the same point, the battle between liberals and conservatives," said Aboitiz, who joined an estimated 1 million Lopez Obrador supporters in rallying in downtown Mexico City on July 16. "We haven't learned anything."
marionlloyd@gmail.com |
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