It had to happen. Although to many it seemed the time would never come, the victory of Vicente Fox in the Mexican presidential elections of July 2nd has finally marked a truly historic turning point: the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI – Institutional Revolutionary Party) has lost power for the first time since its foundation, seventy-one years ago. In fact the vast majority of Mexicans, a young population, has always lived under PRI rule.
After seventy-one years and fifteen successive presidents, the PRi has at long lasthad to hand over the reins of the country. Certainly the writing was on the wall, but few Mexicans were sure they could reallybelieve it.
In reality, the monolithic PrI had already begun to fall to pieces. Since the days of President Miguel de la Madrid (1982-88) the PRi had had a kind of absolute power, exercising control over all aspects of Mexican political, economic and social life, assuming the form in practice of a ‘quasi single party’. At that time the opposition only consisted of the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN – National Action Party), which represented entrepreneurial interests. But it had never really made any serious inroads into the PRI POwer structure.
Previously, the elections – presidential, legislative or administrative – had totally lacked in any suspense. The PRI candidate could count on an a priori victory, guaranteed by the powerful electoral machine, able to pulverise any attempts at resistance.
The PRI controlled every last corner of Mexican territory and the controlwas even tighter in rural areas. But even in the cities the very thoughtof a PRI defeat was a pipe-dream. Heir to the glorious early-twentieth-century Mexican revolution, the PRI embodied a set of values intrinsic to the Mexican nation and so defeat was an unthinkable contradiction. The Mexican model had often been described as a ‘perfect dictatorship’. But in fact it is incorrect to speak of a dictatorship, given that the party-state’s legitimate power was not simply based on the control of the electoral machinery. The PRI did not win by rigging the elections. If anything cheating was only used to make a victory seem greater and more inevitable than it actually would have been. The ideologically left-wing PRI pursued a policy based on the power of dogma, translated into what seemed to be national truths: secularism (absolute separation between Church and State), nationalism (with a special emphasis on independence from the United States), statism, agrarianism (permanent distribution of land), and trade unionism (vertically organised and identified with the party).
The combination of these factors satisfied society’s requirements for a long time. The PRI was never a dictatorship in the strict sense of the word because it was able to embody
state and society. So when itcame to election
time, society inevitably approved this model.
The system had no need to act in a particularly authoritarian way. Apart from a few excсерtions, such as the studentrevolt in 1968 leading to the Tlateloclo massacre, the PRI did not resort to repressive methods. The party exercised control upstream – on society itself.
Moreover, turning to the persuasive interpretation offered by Vargas Llosa, the ‘perfect dictatorship’ never degenerated because every six years the dictator was immolated: the President of the Republic exercised absolute powerfor six years over his country and party, and his privileges included the absolute rightto nominate his successor (the famous dedazo). But once out of office, the ex-president had to quit public life, to become a kind of untouchable national monument, stripped of any real influence. In this way the system was never allowed to degenerate through any long period of personal power. In fact power was always redistributed in the party.
During De la Madrid’s presidency, the foreign debt crisis led for the first time to serious restraints on public finances, the fulcrum of the PRI system. A new generation of technocrats emerged from the ranks. Trained in the USA, they aimed to modernise Mexico by pursuing a liberalist approach.
In the 1980s the election of Carlos Salinas de Gortari was challenged for the first time by a rival with an outside chance of winning: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the former president Lázaro Cárdenas, a founding father of the party. A former PRI member, Cárdenas created his own party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD – Revolutionary Democratic Party), which oppоsed the PRI. It did so not from the right, but from the left, claiming to uphold the authenticvalues of the Mexican revolution.
Salinas de Gortari’s narrow victory was arguably only possible because the computerised electoral system crashed for a few hours: by the time it was switched on again the swing to Cárdenas had suddenly became a defeat.
In the same period the PRI began to lose control over a number of states to the PAN and
the PRD.
Salinas’ term in office led to a number of remarkable new developments (FTAA, the end of land distribution, the concordat with the Vatican, and an end to the single trade union). The Mexico of 1994 was a very differentcountry from that of 1988.
Instead of going down in history as the man responsible for the great change, Salinas left the presidency after a series of mysterious incidents linked to corruption charges affecting his entourage (the murders of Posadas, Colosio and Ruiz Massieu). Salinas failed- or did not wish – to exercise close control over the party and this was to work against him.
Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, almost a chance President, took power the day the Chiapas revolt broke out and the Mexican peso collapsed (the Tequila effect). The omens could not have been worse. But in fact this grey eсоnomist, whose victory had been easier than expected, pursued the reforms to complete the modernisation begun by Salinas. The Mexican economic results were brilliant, the country overcame the prejudices of the past and completed its own perestroika.
Zedillo made a number of fundamental decisions concerning the party. The dedazo was abolished, and the presidential candidate for 2000, Francis Labastida was the winner of the first internal primaries in the history of the party.
The links between the government and the Federal Electoral Institute were severed and the institute finally became an independent entity. In the impeccable 1997 elections (legislative and for the governor ofthe Federal District) the PRI lost a good deal of ground. Although still the leading Mexican party, for the first time it no longer had an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas scored a considerable success in the Federal District.
The 1997 elections proved that Mexico was becoming a pluralist state with three main parties: the PRI, PAN and PRD. From now on, an alternative to the PRI, even at presidential level, became a real possibility.
However, it seemed that a union sacrée of the opposition would have been required to oust the PRi in this year’s election.
The unnatural marriage of the PAN and the PRD only lasted a few months before being becoming unstuck on a very tricky question: the name of the single presidential candidate. Neither Fox nor Cárdenas were willing to step down and it was impossible to agree even on the rules for choosing a single candidate.
A part of the PRD (linked to the influential Porfrio Muñoz Ledo, internal rival of Cárdenas) decided to support Fox and left the party. The Mexican intellectuals mainly connected to the PRD were divided, but support for Fox grew in this group as well. Over and above the ideological differences what mattered was defeating the PRi to allow Mexico to turn a newleaf in its history.
The election outcome confirmed this trend: the PRD obtained a very poor result and Fox won his wager.
But who is Vicente Fox?
Fox, 58, is a former managing director of Coca-Cola, where he started life as a salesman before working his way up to become president of Coca-Cola Mexico. He then left the multinational to run his own business. In 1988 he joined the PAN, and became governor of the state of Guanajuato in 1995.
A businessman and fervent Catholic, he believes in the family and is an anti-abortionist. As an aggressive populist he is the exact opposite of the typical PRi party man, well represented by Francisco Labastida.
The PRI concentrated its campaign on Fox’s personal views, accusing him of wishing to challenge the achievements of the Mexican revolution, selling out the country to multinationals and giving into the positions of the Catholic Church.
The campaign became very heated in the last months ahead of the election when the PRI called out the so-called ‘dinosaurs’, senior party members who had been against Zedillo’s ‘technocratic’ line and deeply critical of him, but willing to forgive all in order not to lose power.
The return to the scene of the old men of the PRI may ultimately have damaged Labastida. Although a party man, he had won the primaries ahead of the more conservative candidates, especially Roberto Madrazo, and had come to symbolise a new democratic and pluralist PRI.
The spectre of a return to the past may well also have driven many of Cárdenas’ potential electorate to switch to Fox, convinced that if the PRI won again, it would have swept away any ideas of change.
Francis Labastida, also 58, was – as we said-a party man. Minister of Energy in 1982, he became a governor of the state of Sinaloa in 1987, where he was injured in a narco-traffickers’ assassination attempt. He then seemed to have quit the political scene when appointed ambassador to Portugal. But on returning from Lisbon he was given an administrative position, before coming to the fore again with Zedillo, first as Minister of Agriculture and then in the delicate role of the Minister of Interior, who had to deal with the open wound of the Chiapas and the growing influence of narco-traffickers.
Labastida had an image as a moderate reformer and enjoyed the confidence of President Zedillo, who viewed his victory in the primaries favourably.
Less charismatic than Fox, he clearly lost out in face-to-face confrontations (for the first time in Mexican politics a televised debate was organised with the six presidential candidates). The results eventually showed that his image as the well-groomed PRI man was not enough to meet the demands for change in the country.
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the virtual victor in 1988 and since then the eternal challenger to the PRI, gradually lost the votes of those who reluctantly decided to go in for tactical voting. Cárdenas was in no way helped by the old-fashioned style of his programme, in many ways pre-1989 and drawing little inspiration fromthe values of the modern left. Even the Zapatists failed to give him much help: they certainly voted for him, but followed the campaign at a distance (moreover, ‘sub-commandant’ Marcos is much more influential in the collective imagination of the European left than in Mexican reality).
Cárdenas’ administration of the Federal District had not been particularly incisive and failed to serve as a springboard for the presidential race.
So Fox’s victory was ultimately greater than expected: he obtained 15,988,740 votes (42.52%), compared to 13,576,385 (36.10%) for Labastida and 6,259,048 (1.64%) for Cárdenas.
The margins of these results are large enough to allay the suspicions of rigging expressed on the eve of the vote: the election was transparent and fair, as was attested by the first-ever presence of international observers.
The PAN became the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies with 224 seats out of 500 (+102), the PRIobtained 209 (-30), and the PRD 124 (-57). Although massive, the swing to the PAN was not enough to obtain an absolute majority.
Following partial elections to the Senate, the PRI lost its absolute majority but is still the leading party, with 58 seats out of 128 (53 went to the PAN and 17 to the PRD).
There has thus genuinely been a political earthquake. But what scenarios now open up for Mexican politics? Despite the accusations made against him and his stated aim to ‘reform almost everything’, Fox will probably not be strong enough to introduce drastic changes to the country.
Moreover, Fox is not in discord with many of the guidelines pursued by Salinas and Zedillo (such as the international opening up of the country, modernisation, and an end to statism).
The fundamental strategic choices (such as NAFTA, recently completed and balanced by a free-trade agreement with the European Union, helping make Mexico one of the most open markets in the world) will not be challenged, but rather consolidated.
Fox will try and clear out a number of the old-fashioned aspects of the PRI system. But in doing so he will have to reckon with a probable revisionist alliance of the PRI and PRD making life difficult for him. He may also be slightly hindered by his inexperience. An unorthodox compared to the style of his party, he successfully personalised his electoral campaign. But the people around him are something of a mystery, since he hired head-hunters to find suitable candidates for government positions (corporate culture!).
Now become a ‘normal party’, the PRI is experiencing something of a witch hunt. An atypical party leader, Zedillo will certainly try to defend his modernist policies and to take the party into the twenty-first century. But he is now openly challenged by the ‘dinosaurs’, nostalgic for the old PRI. They will have to learn to live far from power, something which was utterly unthinkable until recently.
The PRD will probably move closer to the PRI and continue to court the left-wing electorate. But there is an urgent need to modernise its political line and to include new figures in the leadership to flank Cárdenas, who is highly respected butno longera winner.
Recently there has been a good deal of talk about the crisis in Latin American democracy. The developments in the Mexican situation reassuringly run counter to this tendency. The ‘perfect dictatorship’ has now become a full democracy to all intents and purposes. The country has taken difficult decisions in recentyears but has effectively implemented them after a long period of instability.
The problem of the social deficit persists, and is common to all Latin American countries. But this challenge can surely be won by a system with a rapidly growing economy, like that of Mexico in recent years. The main road forward now seems clear.