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 Editorials | Issues | December 2006 
Mexico Could Drop Revolutionary Ban on Reelection
 Gunther Hamm - Reuters
| | Reformers say the slogan that sparked the Mexican Revolution, "Effective suffrage. No re-election," is ready for a tweak. |
Reformers say the slogan that sparked the Mexican Revolution, "Effective suffrage. No re-election," is ready for a tweak.
While many nations bar presidential re-election, Mexico also bans consecutive terms for legislators, which is rare and, some say, outdated. It now faces growing calls for change.
"Many who come to Congress for the first time have no idea what Congress is, so every three years we have to start from scratch," said Congresswoman Dora Alicia Martinez, who will present a reform bill during the current legislative session.
Reformers say spectacles like a punch-up in Congress before President Felipe Calderon's December 1 inauguration would not happen if lawmakers had more experience and knew they would face voters again.
Advocates for change say allowing deputies and senators to seek re-election would force them to be more accountable to their constituents and make Congress more effective.
No one proposes presidents be given the right to run again.
The popular revolutionary slogan, twinning calls for fair elections with a ban on multiple terms, was raised in 1910 against the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and around a million people were killed in the ensuing violence as Diaz was ousted and rival factions battled for power across Mexico.
It still graces government stationary, and in a slightly altered form was the rallying cry for hundreds of thousands of leftist protesters this year who claimed Calderon won July elections unfairly.
Civic Alliance, a non-partisan group that campaigns for electoral reform, says the legislative re-election proposal could win the two-thirds majority of the lower house and Senate needed for approval.
"I don't know of anyone in Congress who is openly against this," said Silvia Alonso, the group's director.
Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, has long supported re-election and he would almost certainly sign it into law if it passes through Congress.
BATTLEFIELD
Still, the proposal is not popular with most Mexicans, who lived under 71 years of often corrupt rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, until opposition leader Vicente Fox won a historic election in 2000.
"They shouldn't allow re-election. Human beings, when they become implanted in power, they get in a frenzy, they get stuck in it. They lose the initial values they came with ... power corrupts," said Ricardo Salinas, 46, a street book seller.
In a 2004 poll, 84 percent opposed re-election, which many Mexicans hold on to as one of the revolution's main victories.
But experts say the decision to ban legislative re-election was made in the backrooms of 1930s politics, when leaders of the party that later became the PRI decided to quiet internal competition by rotating power through its ranks.
It gave leaders a lock on national politics and the loyalty of lower ranks was bought with the prospect of a one-term stint in office, which many used to loot government coffers.
The bill could pass if it is voted on right away, before party officials rally to block it or current legislators, whose own terms would not be extended by the measure, lose interest.
"There is a window of opportunity. But it could close if Congress does not move quickly, if they don't lobby well," said political scientist Benito Nacif. |
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