The True Test Will Come After the Results Are In

Today, Mexicans go to the polls to select a new president, Congress, the mayor of Mexico City, two governors and various other local posts. All eyes are riveted on this election because, for the first time in 70 years, a Mexican presidential race contains the palpable potential for an opposition upset of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It is a transcendent moment in Mexican history, and one wishes that the spirit of statesmanship and reconciliation had permeated the campaign.

Unfortunately, campaigns rarely bring out the candidates’ best qualities. Close races, in particular, can bring out the worst. All three candidates running for president of Mexico are good and decent men, but you would never know it from watching their campaigns.

When it became apparent that the race was going to become competitive, PRI candidate Francisco Labastida decided to shore up soft support by recruiting campaign advisors who represent the darker days of his party’s past. The PRI understandably feels no obligation to lose the election in the name of democracy, but its reliance on traditional machine politics could make its triumph, should it win, a victory of pork over principle. It is a discordant trajectory for a reform-minded man like Labastida, who was elected the candidate in his party’s first open primary.

The problem is almost spiritual in the case of Vicente Fox, the opposition candidate of the National Action Party (PAN). Fox had a choice between running a campaign inspired in love or in hate. A high-minded crusader capable of inspiring true loftiness of vision, he nonetheless based his campaign on an increasingly bitter hatred of the ancien regime. Hoping to better his chances of defeating the PRI and promoting a historic alternation of parties in power at the presidential level, he has practiced the politics of insult with astonishing abandon.

Such has been the behavior of the two front-runners that the formerly fire-breathing, left-wing candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, has appeared almost statesmanlike by comparison.

Why does all this matter? After all, pork-barrel politics and negative campaigns are the norm in U.S. presidential elections.

But Mexico has no history of parties alternating power in the presidency. Mexicans are unaccustomed to the Sturm und Drang of no-holds-barred electioneering. In the heat of the moment, leading journalists, scholars and businessmen have been pressured by both campaigns to abandon their objectivity and take sides, undermining the fundamental values of tolerance necessary to a functioning democracy. No matter who wins, the harsh tone and tactics that have characterized this campaign may complicate the delicate task of post-electoral reconciliation. New democracies are prey to the dangers of polarization, entrenched interests, grudges nursed during the stresses of political transition and confrontation. As one prominent Mexican columnist recently observed, perhaps melodramatically, “This is an election, not a civil war!” It is a measure of opposition frustration with Mexico’s long democratic transition that what ought to be a normal election has been turned into an epic struggle between good and evil.

On the eve of the elections, there existed considerable tension in Mexico over the potential for post-electoral demonstrations, particularly should the PRI win the presidency by a narrow margin. International financial markets are attentive to every twitch in the Mexican body politic and recently sent the peso soaring to over 10 to the dollar on the fear of post-election disturbances. There are those who, in the throes of righteous passion for change, sincerely believe that Mexico will not be a democratic country unless the PRI loses the presidency. Indeed, any political scientist would agree that there are important learning experiences, institutional and cultural transformations that are unlikely to mature without such an alternation. Every objective observer would acknowledge that there are opportunity costs to Mexico’s democratic evolution should the PRI again take the presidency.

All these things may be true, but at the end of the day, respect for the vote is the essence of democracy. It is Mexico’s voters who have the right to decide at what pace they wish to see partisan change proceed. It is not logically consistent with democratic thinking to condition the legitimacy of Mexico’s democracy on a particular partisan outcome. If one truly believes in the right of the electorate to choose, that choice must be respected, no matter what the outcome. There are only a few, extreme cases in history where the right of a particular political party to seek and win the electorate’s favor has been legitimately denied; the case of Germany’s Nazi party is a clear example.

Neither would it be consistent with democratic practice for the ruling party to fail to recognize the victory of an opposition party. It is not uncommon to hear fierce PRI partisans arguing that Fox’s closeness to the Catholic church represents a threat to Mexico’s liberal constitution, or that his closeness to the United States represents a threat to its national sovereignty. None of these arguments would justify an effort by the regime to hold on to power in the face of electoral defeat. Again, one cannot accept or reject an electoral outcome on whether one likes or dislikes the policy inclinations of a given candidate or party.

Only a substantial failure in the integrity of the process could tarnish the legitimacy of Mexico’s electoral outcome and justify questioning the ultimate results. It is for this reason that the world holds its breath, hoping to see free and fair elections today. Legitimate concerns remain among opposition parties regarding possible vote buying or the use of federal programs to pressure voters. Mexico also has come a long way from the days when ballot boxes were full when the polls opened, when the media monotonously intoned the virtues of the official candidate and when electoral tabulating computers crashed mysteriously. Public financing has greatly leveled the playing field of campaign spending, enabling the opposition to flood the media with political advertising to an unprecedented degree. The logistics of the election will be managed by the impeccably autonomous and impartial Federal Electoral Institute. Major foreign dignitaries will be involved in observing the race.

There are many extraordinarily positive aspects of Mexico’s 2000 presidential campaign, in spite of its low-road style and tactics. The very passion and intensity of this campaign will have altered the civic culture and transformed Mexico into a spirited democracy. Millions have become involved in the campaigns in response to the energetic efforts of the candidates. And the uncertainty of the outcome is a tribute to the candidates and to the increasing openness of the Mexican political system. No matter who wins today, Mexico will have been changed forever.

Mexico’s most urgent task tomorrow will be national reconciliation, when all the players will turn their eyes to the job of governance, which is so different from campaigning. The winner’s margin may be relatively slender, and his party may hold a minority position in Congress, placing a premium on the ability to negotiate and build coalitions. Burning bridges with excessively harsh campaign rhetoric and hardball-turnout tactics may have complicated the challenge of legislative governability. Forging congressional coalitions requires goodwill and the maturity to subordinate the struggle for partisan advantage to a higher regard for the interests of the nation.

During the post-electoral period, Mexico will require political figures with some nobility of character. Few doubt the high-minded intentions of Fox, the civilized tolerance of Labastida and genuine ideological convictions of Cardenas. Hopefully, these three men will rise above their campaign tactics and reveal their true inner nobility when the moment of truth arrives.