Mexico’s New Primaries Bring the People Into the Process

It was his seventh campaign appearance of the day, and Marco Bernal was flagging. But, ignoring his exhaustion and the sweltering nighttime air, he bounded onto a platform in the palm-dotted plaza here and belted out another appeal.

“I’m counting on your vote! I’m counting on the vote of Ciudad Mante!” the gray-haired candidate rasped as applause rippled through the crowd that had gathered in the glow of Victorian gaslight-style lamps.

The rally, held just days before today’s election, is part of a major experiment in democracy within the party that has ruled Mexico for seven decades.

Call it The People vs. The Finger.

In the past, a Mexican politician who wanted to be a governor didn’t need The People. He needed only The Finger. That is, the president picked the ruling party’s candidates for top offices, in a process known as dedazo, or “fingering.”

But in an effort to heal internal fractures and restore its tarnished legitimacy, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is now letting its rank and file do the choosing in gubernatorial races across the country.

The stakes are huge. The primaries clearly are a dry run for the presidential election in 2000, which is expected to be the most competitive in a century. The PRI primaries are so open that any voter, no matter what affiliation, can cast a ballot. If the primaries succeed, the PRI could gain a new lease on life. If they fail, the hemisphere’s longest-ruling party could implode, analysts and insiders say.

“The ‘fingering’ no longer works,” political scientist Jose Antonio Crespo wrote in the daily Reforma newspaper. “That’s why this democratic process seems credible, for the first time in the history of the official party.”

The PRI is taking hope from a recent primary in Chihuahua state, which produced such a popular candidate that the party boasts it will wrest the state back from the opposition--an unprecedented event. Three more PRI primaries are scheduled for today. Opposition parties, for the most part, still choose their candidates through internal conventions.

PRI members like Rosalba Perez, a 38-year-old homemaker here in Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas, are enthusiastic about the chance to pick candidates.

“I think the idea is brilliant,” Perez said. She was attending another Bernal rally “to see what he’s offering.” In the past, she noted, her opinion wouldn’t have mattered.

“Before, the government would just say, ‘It’s him,’ ” she explained, extending an index finger.

Party leaders hope that a democratic selection will restore faith in the PRI, which faces a crucial test this year in 10 gubernatorial races.

The party, wounded by a series of economic crises and corruption scandals, suffered its worst defeats ever last year, when it lost control of the lower house of Congress and the Mexico City mayor’s job. With the primaries, “our candidates will be stronger,” said Oscar Hernandez, a high school principal attending a Bernal dinner.

“We’ll present ourselves in front of the other parties with candidates we chose,” he added, jerking a thumb at himself.

PRI activists say the primaries are also a way to force politicians to strengthen their bonds with voters. “The candidate becomes more oriented toward serving everyone, rather than running around to different offices, seeking the support of political [leaders],” said Celso Delgado, head of the PRI National Committee in Mexico City.

Party officials say President Ernesto Zedillo, who has sponsored several key democratic reforms, is enthusiastic about the primaries. So are people on the other end of the PRI spectrum--hard-liners nicknamed “dinosaurs” who see greater opportunities for their candidates than if Zedillo’s “finger” were at work.

But some PRI activists fear that a party accustomed to top-down discipline could tear itself apart, unable to cope with competition.

The primary in Tamaulipas, for example, has been as bitter as any ever played out in the snows of New Hampshire. Bernal, a federal senator, has charged that the powerful PRI governor, Manuel Cavazos Lerma, has been funneling state money and goods--from cement to farm credits--to another leading candidate, Tomas Yarrington, who had served in his Cabinet. Reelection is prohibited in Mexico.

“You know what they’ve been doing? Going neighborhood by neighborhood, first offering things, then making threats,” Bernal angrily told a campaign rally.

A Yarrington spokesman, Mario Ruiz, said both sides have hit below the belt but that there was no proof of abuse of state funds. Yarrington has attacked Bernal as a “political tourist” who has spent much of his career in the federal government.

Some PRI activists worry about this PRI-on-PRI rivalry.

“Here, [the primary] will be divisive. There will be problems,” Clemente Gomez, a 29-year-old truck driver and PRI member, said in Ciudad Mante, a small city about 250 miles north of Mexico City.

“People say, ‘If my candidate doesn’t win [in the primary], I’m voting for someone from another party’ ” in the general election.

It was precisely to avoid such inner conflict that the PRI came up with “The Finger” in the first place. For years, the system worked; the president tried to select candidates who ensured alternation between different political factions.

But these days, PRI politicians who get passed over are no longer content to sit and wait. They have new options: the country’s opposition parties, which are flourishing and attracting PRI defectors.

Ironically, many of Bernal’s charges echo the complaints that opposition parties long have made about the PRI. But in national elections, accusations of fraud have faded, thanks to reforms--including the creation of an independent institute that oversees elections.

The PRI primaries, on the other hand, still have few regulations.

For all the democratic ideals in the new primaries, the Bernal rallies called to mind PRI events of old.

Many supporters were bused in by the campaign, some lured by raffles of blenders and stoves, or offers of live music and soft drinks.

Others arrived in groups belonging to PRI-affiliated unions. As the workers took their places, union representatives dutifully checked off their attendance; they would receive special benefits later.

Still, the appearance could be deceiving. In the past, PRI candidates could count on such supporters. Today, although the big social and labor groups belonging to the PRI can deliver a crowd, they can’t necessarily deliver the vote.

“Everyone can come to these rallies, but it’s what happens at the moment of your vote that counts,” said Andres Suarez, a retired oil worker. In the old days, he noted, the PRI ran elections and could determine how people voted. Now, the vote is secret.

In other words, he said, smiling, “this is democracy.”