Dark Horse Cardenas to Bid Again for Mexico’s Presidency

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who split from the ruling party to challenge Carlos Salinas de Gortari in the bitterly fought 1988 presidential election, on Friday announced a second bid for the office that many Mexicans believe was stolen from him five years ago.

Cardenas made democracy the focus of his campaign for the August, 1994, election, telling a few hundred cheering supporters at a press conference that his would be “the candidacy of the democratic forces of the country.”

In an apparent effort to rebuild his old movement--and to capitalize on the antipathy for political parties that has swept Latin America in recent years--Cardenas said he would work to create a broad-based citizens campaign that cuts across political lines and unifies opposition to the ruling party.

A banner overhead declared, “Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, Candidate of the Citizenry, 1994-2000.”

Mexico has been governed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, for more than 60 years. Cardenas leads the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party that he founded after the 1988 election. But his new candidacy was supported by a petition of about 250 people--many from his party and some independents--who will form a citizens committee to back him.

Cardenas’ party, called PRD, is expected to nominate him at its convention in October. Yet Cardenas left open the possibility that he may support another candidate from his own party or even from another party if he is convinced that such a person has a better chance of beating the PRI.

Cardenas, 58, once a PRI governor of Michoacan state, is the son of former President Lazaro Cardenas, an army general who became a populist hero for handing out land to peasants and who nationalized the country’s oil industry.

Before the 1988 election, Cardenas tried to push the ruling party to open its own process of candidate selection. Traditionally, the outgoing president names the PRI presidential candidate, who, at least until 1988, was virtually guaranteed of victory.

When his liberalization effort failed, Cardenas made a stunning break with the PRI to run for president in a coalition of marginal parties.

At the time, political pundits gave him little chance of winning. But Mexicans were angry over a 50% erosion of their salaries and fed up with the PRI and government corruption. Salinas, considered the architect of the government’s neo-liberal economic program, was unpopular.

On election night, the government failed to deliver the quick vote results it had promised, saying its computers had crashed. Several days went by before official results were released, giving rise to suspicions of vote tampering. Burned and discarded ballots marked for Cardenas turned up in several states.

In the end, the government said Salinas won with just over 50% of the vote--the lowest margin of victory for any PRI presidential candidate. Cardenas had 31% and the conservative National Action Party won less than 20%. Many Mexicans still believe that Cardenas actually won the election.

Today, political observers again consider him a dark horse.

Despite his inauspicious beginning, Salinas has become a tremendously popular president. A poll conducted by the National Bank of Mexico and released this week shows 80% of the public thinks he has done a good job.

Throughout his presidency, Salinas has made hundreds of “campaign” trips across the country to sell his government program. He has softened the blow of economic restructuring with his Solidarity public works program, paid for in part by the sale of state-owned companies. Solidarity has invested heavily in areas that supported Cardenas in 1988.

“This election also is going to be between Salinas and Cardenas because Salinas will put his seal of approval on his candidate and successor and campaign for him,” said Denise Dresser, a political scientist with the Mexican Autonomous Technical Institute.

“And the political system is quick to learn,” Dresser added. “They have figured out how Cardenas will campaign. Whoever the PRI candidate is, he will have to have an element of popular discourse to counter Cardenas.”

And while Cardenas has more experience and organization than he did before the 1988 election, his party is still nothing compared to the vast PRI apparatus. Opposition leaders say Mexico will never have fair elections until it has an independent electoral commission and a separation of the PRI from the state and state funds.

Some observers said Cardenas’ early announcement was a risk in that he will be the only announced candidate for many months and, as such, the principal target of political attacks. But at the same time, they say it may force Salinas to unveil his candidate earlier than he had hoped, leading to a more prolonged and difficult campaign.