Drastic Changes Unlikely in Wake of Baja Election Upset

Much has been made of the “historic” nature of the opposition victory in the Baja California gubernatorial, state and local elections of July 2.

“This electoral process marks a parting of the waters in the democratic life of the country,” declared Arturo Guerra Flores, Baja’s secretary general of government and former state president of the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.

Both the national and international press have hammered away at the theme, bestowing plaudits on Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who sits atop the PRI hierarchy, for “allowing” the victory by Governor-elect Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the candidate of the opposition National Action Party, or PAN. In results finally confirmed last week after a tedious count, Ruffo handily defeated Margarita Ortega Villa, the federal senator who was the PRI candidate.

Upon his scheduled inauguration Nov. 1, Ruffo will become the first opposition governor in modern Mexican history, and, in another precedent-setting development, will be working with a state legislature in which the PRI is the minority.

A Watershed Election

Although there is no question that Ruffo’s ascension to the governorship is a watershed for Mexico and Baja California, most independent analysts agree that life and government will not change drastically in this fast-growing border state, now home to an estimated 3 million people.

Judging by PAN pronouncements to date and the results in municipalities where PAN has captured mayoral seats, observers say that the new Baja governor will probably lead anti-corruption and pro-efficiency campaigns, purge PRI leaders from senior positions, and encourage stability, investment and a strong private-sector presence in government. Many PRI loyalists traditionally rewarded with no-show jobs will undoubtedly lose their principal sources of income. And PRI-affiliated contractors and concessionaires, from taxi drivers to water-truck deliverers, may find that their former monopolies face new competition.

And there may be some high-profile revelations, notably in the 1988 murder of a well-known Tijuana journalist, Hector Felix Miranda--a case that Ruffo has publicly promised to investigate thoroughly. For the first time, PAN appointees will head the state police, judiciary and Tijuana police. (PAN also won the mayoralty of Tijuana for the first time.)

But dramatic departures in governance appear unlikely.

The Symbolic Factor

“I think the most important difference will be the symbolism,” said Tonatiuh Guillen Lopez, a political scientist who directs the department of public administration at the College of the Northern Frontier, a Tijuana-based research institution. “We are definitely entering a distinct period in the history of our country. . . . But I don’t expect radical or spectacular changes. There will be an effort to increase efficiency, to demand honesty and respect of the law in government.”

Whatever happens, the nation--and the world--will be watching. For Baja California has become the paramount laboratory for the political opening and modernization proclaimed by President Salinas. It is also the foremost opportunity for PAN, for half a century the perpetual bridesmaid in Mexican politics, to show that it can wear the ring of authority.

“We’re now really going to learn a lot about whether PAN can be really trusted to run a government,” said Gabriel Szekely, associate director for the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies. “Baja California will be a showcase for the PAN, and it’s in their interest to do the best that they can.”

Asked about their plans, PAN leaders, many of whom have close ties to U.S. investors, talk much about Republican Party-style economic policies--they favor increased foreign investment in Mexico, a greater nexus between the private and public sectors, volunteerism and the like. But PAN’s conservative economic orientation, once widely divergent from the mainstream, is now much in line with recent policies enunciated by the PRI presidency in Mexico City.

Foreign Investment

The PRI’s former public distaste for some foreign-investment schemes, such as the booming assembly-plant industries along the U. S. border, has diminished considerably in recent years as financial planners have sought some way out of the nation’s economic quagmire. The government has embraced the assembly plants and virtually any other form of foreign investment.

Thus, major changes in economic policy seem unlikely.

That prognosis may have been different had the governor’s seat been captured by the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution, which is led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the PRI defector who was almost elected president last year. (Baja was one of a handful of states won outright by Cardenas.)

Although Salinas was apparently willing to lose Baja to the right, observers say that concurrent election results from the interior state of Michoacan, the home state of Cardenas, demonstrate that he was not about to concede that state to a leftist opposition that has quite contrary ideas about how to solve the country’s economic woes. The PRI has claimed a disputed victory in electoral results there.

“There was a clear double standard,” said Lorenzo Meyer, a well-known political scientist affiliated with El Colegio de Mexico, a Mexico City-based research institution. “We have an advance in Baja California, but evidence of the old politics in Michoacan.”

Fear of Strangulation

On the financial front, there has been some fear that the PRI-dominated central government in Mexico City, source of most state funding, might try to strangle an opposition regime by reducing the flow of federal cash, thus making a PAN regime appear in its worst light. In fact, PRI state governments in the past have withheld funds from city halls run by a number of opposition mayors, including Ruffo when he sat as mayor of Ensenada.

However, there is widespread belief that the national PRI leadership and President Salinas recognize that it would be counterproductive to attempt to strangle an economically booming border state such as Baja California, which boasts something that few areas of Mexico can now claim: A vibrant economy, thanks largely to tourism, international trade and the assembly-plant industry.

Apart from hurting Salinas’ reformist image, Szekely noted that taking fiscal action against Baja California “would just be sending the wrong signals to foreign investors. I don’t think Salinas will do that. I think he will use Baja as an experiment for cohabitation with the PAN.”

During his campaign, Ruffo also doubted that the central government would seek to straitjacket a PAN-led state. “Baja California is too important economically to the entire country for the PRI to attempt to make it difficult for us,” the PAN candidate said in an interview shortly before election day.

Throughout the campaign and post-election period, Ruffo has been largely conciliatory toward the Mexican president, going out of his way to thank Salinas for ensuring a democratic transformation in Baja California. Ruffo did this even while condemning clumsy attempts at fraud by local PRI apparatchiks eager to rig the election in favor of the ruling party.

Making Peace With PRI

Ruffo’s olive branches offered to the president are seen as a portent. Stridency has never been part of his political style, even while he was a beleaguered mayor of an almost-bankrupt Ensenada, under vicious attack from PRI-dominated local unions that accused him of incompetence. As governor, Ruffo must rely on assistance from Mexico City, as well as cooperation from PRI elements within the state, to allow government to run smoothly--a precept that PAN leaders consider critical. There has even been talk that Ruffo might place a PRI official in his Cabinet.

“The first thing Ruffo has to do is conciliate,” said one PRI insider here. “It doesn’t do him any good to have conflict within the state while he’s governor.”

Indeed, PRI leaders themselves have been speaking of the need for tranquility in the state, both during and after the elections. Interim Gov. Oscar Baylon Chacon has called for an orderly transition of government. No one wants tourists and investors, the area’s lifeblood, frightened away by reports of disruptions or violence.

Among those most resistant to change, and with the most to lose, are the many PRI loyalists who have for years existed off the public trough, finding a comfortable new position with each state government. The PRI, like political machines elsewhere, has long functioned as a massive patronage dispenser, and, with each new administration, functionaries in search of “bones,” or jobs, have traditionally paid their homage to the new governors and mayors. No-show employees are known as “aviators,” because they are seldom seen after their quick landings to pick up their checks or make ceremonial appearances at their offices.

No One Behind the Door

“The party has always been there for them when they came knocking at its door,” said a longtime PRI insider, who declined to be identified. “But no more.”

Of course, the PRI will continue to be a large presence here, subsidized as always from Mexico City. And the party will still be able to dole out jobs within its own apparatus as well as within the many grass-roots organizations, unions and concessions that it controls. But party leaders have acknowledged that some changes are necessary.

“We have to seek good from this adversity, and we’ll accomplish this when we recognize our errors and mistakes and eliminate them,” Rene Trevino Arredondo, a long-time PRI leader, ex-mayor of Tijuana and current federal congressman, said in an interview last week with the daily El Mexicano.

As governor, meantime, Ruffo will have to rely on the cooperation of at least some of the many PRI loyalists among the 5,000 or so state employees. Although he may replace high-ranking department heads, the experience and know-how of middle-level bureaucrats will be needed.

Meantime, the PAN itself will have to ensure that it doesn’t fall prey to the same tendencies--cronyism, corruption and bureaucratic paralysis--that have turned so many Mexican citizens against the PRI.

The precise program of PAN leaders in Baja remains murky, but one specific goal is clear: A reform of state electoral laws to allow minority parties more opportunity to challenge the PRI monolith. As now drafted, the state’s complicated election statutes favor the ruling party in many ways, allowing PRI manipulations at many stages in the process. PAN leaders charged that the tortuous delays in releasing official election results were yet another example of ruling-party shenanigans.

No Party With Majority

Pushing through reforms may not be as easy as PAN loyalists would like, however. No party, it appears, will have a majority in the new, 19-member state legislature that convenes in October. PAN is now slated to have eight seats, the PRI seven, and minority parties four others, although those numbers could change as the Electoral College, now dominated by PAN, hears complaints surrounding a disputed PRI victory in Mexicali’s 3rd Electoral District. Whatever happens, though, both the PAN and the PRI will have to seek alliances from third parties, all on the left of the political spectrum, far from the PAN ideology.

For PRI lawmakers, such negotiation will be a learning experience, as the party has never before been in the minority. But new skills will be needed most everywhere.

“We’re entering an experimental time, something completely new for the country,” concluded Guillen, the Tijuana political scientist. “By watching what happens here, maybe we can anticipate the future direction of the nation.”