New Day for Mexican Politics

For the past 70 years the selection of the Mexican president has rested in the hands of one man, the outgoing incumbent, who always has been the leader of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI. That’s changed, and Mexico should be the better for it.

Sunday the PRI launched its first presidential primary, and for the next three months four PRI politicians will campaign for the party’s nomination, as in a primary in a democratic country. Come Nov. 7 one will be chosen in a national open primary to face the strongest challenge that Mexico’s opposition parties have ever mounted.

Only time will tell whether the PRI’s primary processes are conducted with the transparency sufficient to convince a skeptical citizenry that this will be a fair election.

President Ernesto Zedillo, who vowed in March that he would not designate a successor as party standard-bearer, and the PRI directorship that established the primary system are to be commended for keeping their word and maintaining an open electoral process. Surely the PRI’s election foes--the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the right-wing National Action Party (PAN)--should be encouraged. At this point it appears that the party’s supporters, along with those of the opposition parties, will be free to select the candidates of their choice.

Zedillo and the PRI have embraced this uncharted and perilous course out of necessity. Mexico’s political panorama has changed dramatically in the last decade, and the opposition parties are viable and, at long last, could sweep a candidate into Los Pinos, the presidential palace.

For the PRI the national open primary might provide a preview of the July 2000 presidential election. Last year the ruling party used the open primary model in the state of Chihuahua and it worked. The PRI candidate went on to win the governorship. Just as possible, however, is a party split in the PRI primary. One of the candidates is hitting hard at the policies embraced by Zedillo.

Nobody ever said democracy was predictable, but Mexicans should hope that the PRI comes out of an open presidential primary with clean hands and a fairly chosen nominee. Seventy years of PRI rule and back-room nominations have failed the country in many ways. Mexico should continue on the open path to full democracy.