Opposition Parties Vow to Shake Up Mexican Congress

It started over scrambled eggs and an artery-busting tortilla casserole.

Leaders of Mexico’s fractious opposition parties sat down over breakfast recently to prepare for the new Congress that opens Monday. What resulted was a bombshell: Stunning the ruling party, the four opposition parties banded together in a majority that intends to seize control of the lawmaking body.

Starting this week, the opposition vows, Mexican politics will be run in a new way. After seven decades in which the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, exercised iron control, routinely rubber-stamping presidential decisions, members of Mexico’s Congress could finally start acting like policymakers.

“This is the democratic takeover of the Palace of San Lazaro,” crowed opposition lawmaker Santiago Creel, referring to the building that houses the Chamber of Deputies.

The shake-up in Congress is part of a new political landscape in Mexico after midterm elections July 6, in which the PRI turned in its worst-ever performance. While it remained the biggest party in Congress overall, the PRI lost its majority in the lower house.

Still, many PRI members apparently believed that they would still hold sway over Congress. No wonder: Only weeks ago, opposition politicians were denouncing one another as “fascists” and “tyrants.”

But the four parties, patching over huge differences on politics and economics, have now vowed to use their combined majority to take the levers of power away from the PRI.

Their biggest challenge to the system so far came Saturday. After a breakdown in negotiations with the PRI on the transition, the opposition parties went ahead and formally installed the new lower house of Congress--without the PRI even being present. The opposition parties named two of their own members to preside over the chamber and its steering committee.

While the opposition has focused so far on seeking administrative power in Congress, it has put President Ernesto Zedillo and his party on notice that they no longer make policy alone.

“What’s important is that Congress be a real Congress,” said Creel, a deputy from the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, who negotiated the opposition accords. “We want to review where the tax money goes, how it’s used, what are the controls.”

Another priority: probing the official corruption that is believed to have drained millions of dollars from government coffers in recent years.

The new alignment in Congress has already made its voice heard. Zedillo recently vowed that his free-market, free-trade economic policies wouldn’t change, despite the opposition victories. Opposition parties blasted the speech. Both the PAN and the other main opposition group--the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD--want to slash the sales tax, a key source of government income.

The opposition groups have gone so far as to attack the very symbols of power in Mexico. For example, they are demanding a chance to respond to the president’s State of the Union address, which officially opens Congress on Monday.

In the past, the event has been treated almost like a coronation, with lawmakers and thousands of other Mexicans lining up to greet the president.

“This is the symbolism we come from in Mexico, an adoration of the president,” said political commentator Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez. “This is why so many sectors are saying we need symbols that show we’re no longer that country.”

For Americans accustomed to a take-no-prisoners Congress, it may be difficult to imagine how docile Mexico’s legislature had been. In past decades, when three-quarters of the deputies were PRI-istas, the body featured all the spontaneity of a Soviet party congress.

The deputies’ obedience reflected the immense power held by the PRI hierarchy under one-party rule. Congress was so subservient that the president’s staff often wrote the analyses of bills that were supposed to be done by congressional committees, said Jeffrey Weldon, an expert on Congress who teaches at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. Many PRI deputies “just had to show up and raise their hands when they were told to,” he said.

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The PRI still maintains great power. It holds 77 of the 128 seats in the Senate, which must approve nearly all legislation except for the government budget. Some fear, in fact, that the PRI may use its Senate majority to block legislation, coming from the lower Chamber of Deputies, causing gridlock that could cripple the government and unnerve foreign investors.

Creel, however, said the PRI would lose if it consistently tried to block legislation because the lower house would retaliate by blocking Senate bills.

“It’s like what happened in the Cold War. . . . [The superpowers] had so many arms that no one dared shoot,” he said. “Detente will work the same way in the Chamber and Senate.”

But there is another reason why Mexico could be spared this jam: The opposition parties, with vastly differing policies and control of 261 of 500 seats in the lower house, are unlikely to stick together on all legislation. On economic matters, analysts say, the conservative PAN (with 121 seats) may frequently side with the government. On social questions, the government could ally with the left-wing PRD (125 seats). The other opposition groups are the tiny Green (eight seats) and Workers (seven seats) parties.

Even as they pledged to work together on bringing greater democracy to Congress, leaders of the opposition parties were already sniping at one another in recent days.

As the ground shifts in Congress, analysts say, Zedillo will have to assume a new role. More than ever, he will have to seek allies.

“If the president used to be able to push a button and have the spending law approved automatically, he now has to do politicking with the opposition--and his own party,” said Silva-Herzog Marquez.

In fact, even as it digs in its heels over many proposed opposition changes, the ruling party itself is being transformed.

Electoral reforms have provided parties with government money for campaigns, lessening the PRI’s dependence on the president. And after their party’s shellacking in the last elections, PRI stalwarts may be less willing to vote for unpopular policies in Congress.

PRI members also now have an alternative route to power: the newly important opposition parties. In the latest defection from the PRI, a general who headed the defense committee in the last legislature bolted to the PRD last week.

Whether Zedillo can win alliances with the opposition--and keep his own party together--is unclear. The PRI’s unity will become especially important before the presidential election in 2000.

“What the president will have to do is ask the opposition parties to dance all the time,” Weldon said. “He’ll be out dating the opposition parties, and the PRI will feel left at home.”