Ruling Party Dusts Off Its Old Tricks

With Mexico’s midterm elections six weeks away, the electoral strategy of the ruling party--the PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party--is now quite evident. Although it would very much like to continue its control of the Mexico City mayor’s office, which until this year was a presidential appointment, the party will accept the likely victory of an opposition candidate. The PRI will be less accommodating of its rivals for seats in Congress, for control of this institution is essential for the survival of the current political system, which the PRI dominates. The party will do whatever is necessary to preserve its majority in the Chamber of Deputies.

Until late last year, the PRI acceded to President Ernesto Zedillo’s wishes and followed a political strategy that called for negotiation with political rivals, limited yet significant democratic advances and absence of presidential partisanship. Following stunning defeats at the polls in state elections in November (and again in March), the president and his party reversed course dramatically. In early December, Zedillo signaled the party’s move away from negotiation and conciliation when he adopted a highly partisan personal attitude, replaced the party president and fired his attorney general, a member of the opposition National Action Party (PAN).

The PRI’s traditionally aggressive approach toward winning elections has been in full swing in the run-up to the July 6 vote--combative electoral tactics, militant rhetoric, smear attacks, attempts to silence critics, campaigning by the president and arbitrary limits on funding for election observers.

The main target is not the campaign for mayor of Mexico City; the polls show Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) far ahead of the PRI and PAN contenders.

Although the loss of the federal capital would be a major defeat for the PRI, it would not be an unmitigated disaster. The autonomous action of any opposition mayor will be sharply limited by the federal government’s control over budgetary funds for the city and by electoral rules that virtually guarantee PRI control of the city council.

Administration officials have quietly met with Cardenas, presumably to work out an entente designed to minimize conflict. This does not mean that the PRI has given up all hope of winning the mayor’s office. Rather, it seems to represent a new pragmatism: a recognition that the costs of losing in Mexico City pale in comparison to the harm that would be done to the PRI-dominated system if the party were to lose control of Congress. Polls show support for the PRI slipping below the threshold needed to preserve an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies. The PRI will do whatever is required to reverse this dangerous trend.

Thus far, the legislative campaign of the PRI has relied heavily on two less than savory tools: fear and mud. The fear campaign has been spearheaded by warnings from the party president that opposition control of Congress would bring chaos to Mexico. Two developments this month seemed orchestrated to confirm this assertion. The head of Mexico’s main labor confederation (which is affiliated with the PRI) announced that an opposition victory would be greeted with strikes, work stoppages and protest marches. Days later, a jurisdictional dispute between the PRI governor of Puebla and the PAN mayor of the state capital devolved into a violent confrontation between the mayor’s supporters and the state police.

The fear campaign has been coupled with a series of accusations designed to tarnish the image of leading opposition figures and thereby weaken electoral support for their parties. The former attorney general has been dogged by allegations of incompetence, and a questionable land deal favoring the PAN’s former presidential candidate came to light in early spring. In the last few weeks, Cardenas also has been accused of shady business deals and concealing assets. The attack is aimed not so much at his candidacy but is instead an attempt to shake the public perception that the PRD represents honesty in governance.

If fear and mud, in combination with an improving economic situation and the PRI’s traditional distribution of patronage and manipulation of the media, are unable to guarantee victory in the Chamber of Deputies on election day, the PRI is likely to resort to blatant manipulation. The party will grudgingly recognize opposition victories that serve to give the PRI-based system a democratic gloss, but it will not allow an opposition legislature that could undo the system.