Vote Results Push Mexico Into Era of Political Pluralism

A political tremor rocked Mexico on Monday as the extent of the ruling party’s losses in Sunday’s elections became clear, thrusting the nation into a new era of political pluralism.

The days of Mexico’s “imperial presidency” seemed over as returns released Monday showed voters denying the ruling party its majority in Congress for the first time in seven decades.

With 86% of ballots counted, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, had almost 39% of the vote for the lower house of Congress, short of the 42% it needs for a majority under Mexico’s complicated electoral system.

The PRI’s control of the Senate was not at risk in Sunday’s vote.

Even if the PRI ekes out a narrow legislative victory in final results expected today, the balloting almost certainly will usher in an unprecedented balance of power among legislative factions, between the central government and opposition-held states and, most important, between the legislative branch and the traditionally all-powerful presidency.

Legislative coalitions will be formed, broken and reformed around key issues that affect every Mexican’s life, analysts expect, although it remained unclear Monday which parties will form those coalitions and when. Whatever happens, analysts say, there will be frequent displays of sloppy, genuine democracy in a nation where for nearly seven decades a single party has rammed through its policies--which as recently as last year included tax hikes, salary freezes and increased social spending.

Even aides to President Ernesto Zedillo, whose term runs until 2000, say the future Chamber of Deputies may force him to use one of his constitutional powers that few--if any--Mexican presidents have employed: the veto.

To Mexicans, long used to the powerful presidency and an obedient, rubber-stamp Congress, the notion that a president may not be able to control Congress is stunning. “In the past, to understand Mexican politics you had to focus on the president. Now you have to shift the spotlight to Congress,” said political scientist Denise Dresser.

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The result is a new era of political uncertainty. A presidency and legislature dominated by the PRI had been central elements of the one-party rule established after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20.

“The key word to understand in Mexican politics today is unpredictability,” Dresser added. “But unpredictability is the essence of democracy. In the past, Mexico was the living museum of Latin American politics, a country where everything was predictable.”

No one is predicting sweeping changes in Mexico’s economic or political policies. But the opposition could influence budget decisions and perhaps pull back the curtain on alleged multimillion-dollar corruption in PRI governments.

The congressional vote marked the second part of a one-two punch that left the PRI gasping, although it will remain--at the very least--the largest political faction in Congress, and some vestiges of its old guard triumphed. Party stalwarts were far ahead in the tallies for the governorships in Sonora and Campeche, as well as scores of mayoralties.

But the second prize in the balloting, the highly influential Mexico City mayor’s job, has passed to an opposition candidate for the first time. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, won that contest--the first election for the position, regarded as a steppingstone to the presidency and previously appointive--in a landslide.

The PRD also swept nearly all the seats in the Mexico City legislature, shutting out the PRI. It nearly doubled its representation in the lower house of Congress.

At the other end of Mexico’s emerging power structure is the conservative right embodied in the National Action Party, or PAN. The PAN will now control at least six of 31 states, dozens of major cities and towns and nearly a third of the nation’s legislative seats.

These two main opposition parties have vastly differing agendas. The PAN, with 27% of the lower-house vote, supports conservative, pro-business policies. The PRD, with almost 26%, has harshly criticized free-market economics.

But the parties have made some common pledges. They have vowed to fight corruption, cut taxes and reduce the highly centralized nature of Mexico’s government, by steering a greater chunk of federal tax revenues to cash-starved state and local governments.

Moving to seize the initiative, the PAN’s leader, Felipe Calderon, called on Zedillo early Monday to sit down with all political parties to hammer out a legislative agenda that promotes democratic reforms. His party, he declared, wants to make the Chamber of Deputies a body that “will not destroy or obstruct political life.”

Whether such harmony will prevail was unclear.

In the new era, opposition parties could support Zedillo’s free-market policies. Or they could tie them up in legislative stalemates.

The parties could transform Mexico by investigating the multimillion-dollar corruption that allegedly has underpinned PRI governments for years. Or they could simply fight with each other.

Much depends on which faction dominates each party and whether the leaders can control their freshman members of Congress.

Despite these uncertainties, financial markets were buoyant Monday. Mexico’s stock market index leaped 2.08% to close at 4,741.24, a record. The peso also strengthened.

Market analysts said investors were relieved that the elections had been free of the widespread fraud that tainted past balloting.

“Part of [investors’] view of Mexico . . . is that it’s like a pressure cooker,” said Gray Newman, chief economist at HSBC James Capel Research Mexico. “These elections have gone so peacefully, they’ve let off some steam. People view that as a positive long-term for Mexico.”

President Clinton and his advisors also praised the vote. They shrugged off the possibility that opposition gains could weaken the pro-U.S. orientation of recent PRI governments.

“We view these elections as a real win for democracy,” said Thomas MacLarty, the U.S. special envoy for the Americas, in a telephone interview. “I think, at bottom, what that reflects is increasingly we have common interests and shared values.”

Despite the PRD’s remarkable apparent gains, analysts did not interpret Sunday’s vote as a shift to the left. Rather, they said, the PRD had captured a protest vote aimed at the PRI, which has presided over a series of severe economic recessions.

The conservative PAN crowed that it had won at least two of the six governorships up for grabs--in Queretaro, where the PRI considered its candidate a sure win, and Nuevo Leon, the country’s industrial powerhouse. Until 1989, the PRI had held all the nation’s 31 governorships.

But the conservatives were viewed as having done relatively poorly Sunday. The PAN appeared to gain little ground in Congress, for example. Analysts suggested that the party chose poor candidates and was unable to capitalize on the discontent over the economy and ruling-party corruption scandals.

“‘The PAN thought it would be sufficient to have a good brand name,” Dresser said. “But the choice of a bad product” cost the party the Mexico City mayoral race and possibly numerous votes in the rest of the country.

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The overall winners in Sunday’s historic vote “have been the people of Mexico,” said famed writer Octavio Paz in a brief essay titled “A New Era” published Monday in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. “The other winner has been President Zedillo, who has . . . shown that he is bent on achieving a deep democratic reform.”

Diego Fernandez de Cevallos--something of an expert on losing Mexican elections since he ran second to Zedillo three years ago--had reached a similar conclusion on election day. “There will be no real losers,” said the gray-haired PAN politician, after casting his vote in a leafy lane in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood.

“Today’s results will be good for everyone in the long run. Some people will think they’re hurt by the outcome, but believe me, everybody wins. Democracy wins. The people win,” he said.