Mexico Opposition Debates Uniting for Presidential Race

Struggling to end the ruling party’s unbroken 70-year grip on presidential power, Mexico’s two main opposition parties plunged into debate Monday on a surprise proposal to choose a single candidate for next year’s election.

The idea came this weekend from Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the likely nominee of the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD. Cardenas called on all opposition parties to organize a winner-take-all primary for a candidate to challenge the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Cardenas tacitly acknowledged the possibility that his party and the right-wing National Action Party, or PAN, would split the opposition vote once again, allowing the ruling party to win yet another six-year presidential term. The PRI has won several governor’s races in such circumstances over the past year.

Politicians and commentators alike wrestled with the implications of a rainbow alliance similar to the one formed by opposition parties in Chile in 1988 that went on to defeat Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s bid to extend his rule.

Vicente Fox, the charismatic governor of Guanajuato state and probable PAN presidential candidate, said he was “more than willing” to enter serious discussions on the proposal.

The challenge lies in whether the two main opposition parties are willing to put aside their sharp policy differences in the interest of ending the PRI’s domination of the presidency since 1929. Several smaller parties also could join the alliance.

Some opposition leaders expressed doubt that the parties could draft a compromise platform.

But Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, national leader of the PRD, noted that in congressional elections in July 1997, opposition parties won 17 million votes compared with the ruling party’s 11 million.

The ruling party lost its majority in the lower house for the first time in that election. But it retains control of the executive branch. In the past year, it has struck temporary alliances with the PAN on specific congressional votes such as the budget and a bailout of the banking system.

The ruling party, which turns 70 on Thursday, is a mix of interest groups in every city and town. To many foes, it is a source of corruption and patronage and must be ousted if genuine democracy is to take hold in Mexico.

Itself in disarray as it seeks to modernize, the PRI is locked in debate over how to select its own candidate. President Ernesto Zedillo, who is barred by the constitution from running for a second term, has said he will not follow the tradition of anointing his successor. The party is considered likely to stage a national primary to pick its presidential candidate later this year.

PRI leaders Monday called the potential alliance a sign of weakness. Party President Mariano Palacios Alcocer scoffed that the opposition parties’ willingness to “abandon their ideologies and surrender their principles . . . is an admission, a confession and proof that they cannot compete against the Institutional Revolutionary Party.”

Reforma, an independent Mexico City newspaper, said in an editorial: “How things have changed. Before, the opposition parties were throwing things at each other. Now they are throwing flowers and baited fishhooks.”

“What is notable and healthy for the country,” Reforma said, “is that both the governing party and the opposition have put on the table the issue of letting the citizenry choose the candidates.”