Does Cardenas’ Victory Mean a Tilt to the Left?

Judging by last week’s voting results, Mexico City voters, much like the French in their recent parliamentary elections, were fed up with their government’s romance with the market economy, unemployment, declining disposable incomes and corruption. And much like the French, they opted for a leftist, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, and his leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) to run their city. Cardenas’ policies are as radical as any of the French Socialists’. But will his stunning victory in Mexico City, and his party’s surprising success in the congressional races, enable him to do what the French leftists have vowed to do: slow the march to a market economy?

Unfortunately for Cardenas, he was elected to a job that will relentlessly distract him from such grand ambitions. Crime in Mexico City increases at a rate of 50% a year. Jobs are being lost by the thousands. Pollution is unbearable. The peso devaluation has especially hurt Mexico City dwellers; many owe more to the bank than their houses are worth. An endless flow of peasants to the city has created a class of permanently poor. A huge proportion of the city’s real estate, owned by the federal government and other federal entities such as the National University, does not produce property taxes or water fees.

Complicating matters is the fact that Cardenas currently has no legal authority to govern the city. The old governing statute was scrapped a year ago when the three major political parties agreed to make the mayor’s job an elective, rather than an appointive, one. A new statute will establish powers as critical as who can appoint the chief of police and the attorney general. Under the old law, the president held these powers. It will take months to negotiate a new law and, needless to say, it will not be cost free for the new PRD administration, since the government regards the statute as a bargaining chip.

Nonetheless, Cardenas will be a formidable political figure. As mayor of Mexico City, he will have the second-most-powerful bully pulpit in the nation. He is the undisputed leader of his party, which will have the third-largest contingent, one seat less than the National Action Party (PAN), in the House of Deputies. The PRD may even enjoy the passive support of many disaffected PRI legislators who are ideologically closer to Cardenas than to President Ernesto Zedillo.

It was only three years ago that Cardenas’ political career was widely considered to be over. He stumbled badly in the 1994 presidential contest. His steadfast opposition to Mexico’s market reforms produced no political payoff. But Zedillo’s bungled peso devaluation in late 1994 and the depression that followed brought Cardenas back from the realm of the politically dead. His stature rose as that of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari collapsed. Furthermore, PAN and its mayoral candidate in Mexico City, Carlos Castillo-Peraza, badly miscalculated voter sentiment in Mexico’s capital. Castillo-Peraza never explained how the economic reforms his party supported in the last legislative session would bring relief to a badly battered population.

Central to the PRD’s and Cardenas’ success is an economic program that significantly departs from the government’s pro-capitalist bent. The PRD’s economic platform relies on new government spending programs to speed up economic growth and reduce poverty. During his campaign, Cardenas promised to create 700,000 jobs in Mexico City alone. Though he did not explain how he would do this, most of his party’s program is based on two premises: that the government can make things happen, and that Mexican companies can grow much faster, particularly in the domestic market, if they are protected from “unfair” imports.

Cardenas claims not to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement or other trade pacts, but he has stated that Mexican companies have been badly weakened by imports of consumer goods and some intermediate goods that are or could be manufactured in Mexico. The PRD program calls for renegotiating NAFTA’s provisions on tariff reductions (most tariffs would come down to zero by 2003). He also opposes the NAFTA provision that confers equal treatment to foreign investors. He would renegotiate the tariff schedule.

As mayor of Mexico City, Cardenas can preach this economic gospel as frequently as he desires. It’s just that he has no power to implement it. To do that, he must be president, a job he has declared he wants in the year 2000.

Until then, however, the economic stakes are going to be much lower. No major, new economic reforms or initiatives are expected. Instead, the major parties will be engaged in far more mundane matters like budget negotiations and learning how to work with each other. There will be little time to take up more ambitious, partisan issues that Cardenas favors.

The PRD’s large presence in Congress will give it an unfamiliar role in shaping legislation. But though the PRD has fundamental philosophical and ideological differences with the PRI and the government, it shares with them such basic budgetary objectives as maintaining a balanced budget.

Truth be told, the PRD’s economic influence will be largely determined by the legislative strategy Zedillo decides to pursue. The president may try to reach an agreement with the more conservative PAN, a party that is ideologically closer to the government and him. Or he may attempt to reach out to both PAN and the PRD in an effort to force the two of them to compete for his favors. Whichever course Zedillo pursues, he can rest assured that Cardenas, no matter how loud his rhetoric, will not be able to alter the basic economic direction he has set for Mexico. In short, Mexico is no France.

Mexico’s rapidly changing economy and politics certainly make predicting the future a risky business. Cardenas may defy all odds and succeed as Mexico City mayor. He may be too radical for his own good and end up alienating his volatile constituency. The economy may rebound so strongly that Cardenas or another PRD candidate may find it impossible to run on an anti-reform platform.

Cardenas will use his new bully pulpit to discredit the president and/or his market reforms. But it is the economy, and people’s expectations, that will decide how they will vote in 2000. And, in politics, that’s a lifetime away.