Mexico: Troubling Election Signs

Other countries seldom notice non-presidential elections in Mexico. But today’s voting in several Mexican states, especially the border state of Sonora, is of special interest because some key races are in doubt. That is rare in the tightly controlled Mexican political system.

Opinion polls indicate that the gubernatorial candidate of the opposition National Action Party, known by its Spanish acronym, PAN, has a chance to defeat a rival nominated by the powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. PAN might well win an honest election in Sonora, whose citizens are angry about the economy--an anger intensified by still another recent plunge in the value of the peso. PAN candidate Adalberto Rosas is an articulate and popular former mayor of the state’s largest city. Rosas’ PRI opponent, Rodolfo Felix Valdez, by all accounts an honest civil servant, is a colorless campaigner. Should Rosas win, it would be the first major loss for PRI since it was founded 56 years ago.

But even before the polls opened there were troubling signs that PRI leaders have no intention of losing in Sonora, even if they must resort to questionable tactics to win. State election officials, all appointees of the current PRI government, disqualified some PAN candidates and poll-watchers on last-minute technicalities. The number of polling places in cities and districts where PAN candidates have run strongly in the past were unexpectedly reduced. State voter lists suddenly bulged with electors newly registered by the PRI while PAN sympathizers were being dropped.

Such heavy-handed maneuvering will surprise no one who has watched the PRI political machine in operation. But it is regrettable to see all this pre-election activity in Sonora running so entirely contrary to a pledge by Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid that the 1985 elections would be the most open and, by implication, the most honest in the nation’s history. It also slows, if not reverses, a recent trend by Mexican political leaders to open the system to opposition parties.

Many thoughtful observers argue that, for all its faults, the PRI has given Mexico political stability during a transition from a poor, rural country to a modern nation that is increasingly urbanized and industrial. But if Mexico is to become the great nation that its leaders want it to be, it must open its political system to many more voices. The hope in today’s voting in Sonora, and elsewhere in Mexico, is that the nation is closer than ever to having a truly open political system. But if those elections are less honest than they should be, and especially if voter frustration over that fact results in the protests and even the violence that some observers fear, it will be a severe setback not just for well-intentioned leaders like De la Madrid but also for the nation as a whole.