Political March Toward Democracy Hits a Pothole

‘You know, there will never be truly free and fair elections in Mexico, because if there were, the PRI would lose every election.”

Five years ago, when a frustrated, reform-minded, lower-echelon official of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party made this statement to me, I regarded it as hyperbolic. Despite numerous political and economic setbacks sustained by the PRI since then, the statement remains inaccurate for many parts of the country, especially where underdevelopment and insufficient organization by opposition parties combine to assure continued PRI dominance. But, lately, the PRI has been behaving as if my informant’s caustic assessment were true.

Last week, the PRI majority in Congress reneged on a series of accords painfully negotiated over the last two years among Mexico’s four largest political parties and endorsed by President Ernesto Zedillo as the “definitive electoral reform” that he had promised when he took office Dec. 1, 1994. Where the parties had been unable to reach agreement on campaign financing, for example, the PRI simply imposed its own self-serving preferences. Among other retrogressive changes, the latest electoral legislation:

* Blew the lid off campaign spending by authorizing up to 2 billion pesos ($289 million) in public funds, to be spent on next year’s congressional election campaigns. The PRI will receive $109 million; the next largest party, the right-of-center National Action Party (PAN), will get $65 million. Parties will be allowed to raise an additional $29 million from private sources.

* Eliminated criminal penalties (prescribed in a 1994 electoral law reform) for exceeding campaign-spending limits, making such abuses mere administrative infractions subject to fines.

* Gave the PRI even greater access to the free public media, while eliminating the Federal Electoral Institute’s obligation to help finance television spots for all major political parties. Only the PRI and, to a much lesser extent, the PAN have the financial wherewithal to produce their own commercials. The third largest party, the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will be hurt most by this change.

* Made it more difficult, if not impossible, for the newly appointed, independent Federal Electoral Institute to clean house at the state and local levels in advance of the ’97 elections for Congress and the head of the Federal District (Mexico City). The lower-level electoral commissions, in many places currently dominated by PRI militants tied to PRI state governors, were to have been “renovated” this fall. The mandated delay may keep in place many of the state and local functionaries who are most likely to commit pro-PRI fraud in 1997.

* Made it impossible for opposition parties to run a “unity” candidate for mayor of Mexico City in next year’s first-ever popular election for this office. The new law also severely restricts possibilities of running coalition candidates for other offices. Opposition-party coalitions would be a major threat to the PRI in places where opposition parties have been losing since 1988 largely because they divided the anti-PRI vote. This is especially true in the Mexico City metropolitan area, home to about one in four Mexicans, where recent polls show the PRI running well behind the PAN and even the PRD.

The approval of this package in the Chamber of Deputies, without a single affirmative vote by opposition-party members and only one negative vote from a PRI deputy, was a throwback to the days when the PRI, with its overwhelming presence in both houses of the Congress, routinely got its way on any issue by steam rolling the opposition. The PRI’s majority has been reduced by a series of electoral reforms that required greater use of proportional representation in allocating congressional seats. But it remains large enough to dictate the terms of legislation on which PRIistas are united.

Top PRI leaders have justified their party’s decision to go it alone on electoral reform as a response to “intransigent” opposition parties and “national security” needs. Arguing that 2 billion pesos in public funds will be needed to finance congressional campaigns next year, they warned that failure to allocate such an extravagant sum--a 600% increase over the last national election--would tempt parties or individual candidates to raise campaign contributions from drug traffickers. Since neither the PAN nor the PRD can plausibly be accused of taking money from narcotraticantes, it is the PRI, apparently, that must be inoculated against such dangerous infusions of cash.

In fact, the PRI desperately fears losing its majority in the Congress--at least of the 500-member Chamber of Deputies--in next year’s election. Maintaining control there is paramount, in part because a PRI majority can cut off congressional committee investigations of official corruption and abuses of authority (as it did just last month), investigations that could implicate important PRIistas and business leaders who have profited from their close relations with the PRI-government apparatus.

Zedillo’s role in all this remains unclear. Assuming he was truly committed to the sweeping electoral reforms he initially promoted, he has suffered a major defeat. His “definitive electoral reform” truncated, he now says that no further efforts will be made to level the political playing field during his term.

Zedillo has steadfastly resisted the traditional presidential role of being head of his own party. He has allowed greater autonomy to PRI officials at all levels, even state governors who openly defied him, than any modern president, and he has suffered more public defeats at the hands of the ruling party’s delegation in Congress than any chief executive since the late 1920s. Both Zedillo and the country may now be paying the price for this wholesale breakdown of presidential control over the PRI apparatus.

The recent actions of PRI leaders demonstrate, once again, that when the party feels cornered, it will take virtually any step necessary to keep itself in power. Most professional PRI politicians have no interest in competing with the opposition on approximately equal terms. PRI “dinosaurios” seemingly remain confident that public anger over the shameless rigging of electoral rules, continuing official corruption, unsolved political assassinations and economic mismanagement that has plunged millions of Mexicans into poverty and unrepayable debt since December 1994 can be held in check. Can they get away with it, for yet another congressional term, or another presidential administration? There are several countervailing trends that make this hard-line stance untenable.

First, the PRl’s ability to commit most of the old-style types of vote fraud--such as, stuffing ballot boxes and multiple voting by organized bands of PRI militants--has been seriously eroded by five major sets of electoral reforms in the past 10 years. A 1994 reform prohibited the use of government funds for political purposes, thereby ending the most important means of financing PRI campaigns--direct transfers of money from federal government ministries. These and other important changes in the rules remain in place.

Even some of the most recent changes in the electoral code may work to the benefit of the opposition. For example, the opposition parties should be able to use their increased allocations of public campaign funds more efficiently than the PRI. Relatively more of their money can be invested in citizen poll-watching operations, while the PRI must spend heavily on an army of salaried campaign workers and material giveaways to overwhelm the opposition.

Second, the main opposition parties, especially the PAN, grow stronger with each round of elections. Entrenched state and local PRI machines will not dismantle themselves quietly. However, it is now clear that in many parts of Mexico, they can be swept away by a tidal wave of votes, cast by Mexicans whose patience with nearly seven decades of increasingly incompetent, corrupt and socially unjust rule has finally run out. There is now a high enough level of vigilance by citizen organizations, as well as international observers, to ensure that most of those votes will be respected.

At least in the short term, the opportunity to advance Mexico’s democratization by consensus among all major electoral contenders has passed. The PRI’s unilateral counter-reform should stimulate the opposition parties to concentrate their efforts not on cutting deals with the PRI but on more widespread grass-roots organizing, selecting attractive candidates, expanding manpower for mobilizing and defending their vote, and developing a program of governance that will enhance their credibility as an alternative to the PRI.