With Competing Claims to Top Job, Tabasco Is a State of Confusion

The languid southern Mexican state of Tabasco on Wednesday either had no governor at all or two of them--or maybe just one, depending on whom you asked.

The oil-rich state on the Gulf of Mexico, long a loyal fiefdom of the party that dominated 20th century Mexico, lost its governor-elect Friday when the Federal Electoral Tribunal annulled the Oct. 15 election on grounds of irregularities favoring the state’s ruling party. It was the first time a major Mexican election has been overturned.

Since then, the state legislature has become an arena for fistfights and verbal sparring between legislators who support rival candidates to serve as interim governor, generating an awkward power vacuum.

And even as one interim governor, Enrique Priego, tried to consolidate his hold on power Wednesday by receiving hundreds of party faithful at the gubernatorial residence, his foes were trying to negotiate at the federal level in Mexico City for another politician to be inaugurated instead.

After hours of confusion Wednesday, rival gubernatorial candidate Adan Augusto Lopez declined to be sworn in, saying he preferred a negotiated solution to a confrontation. Lopez’s supporters, however, still pushed for him as a compromise choice.

While people on the street muttered about the confusion of two rival appointed governors, loyalists were convinced there was just one--their man. Meanwhile, some constitutional experts worried that neither appointment was legitimate, and some politicians were maneuvering to find an alternative to both men.

Whoever ends up running Tabasco until a new election can be held, the cost will probably be high for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until it lost the presidency July 2.

The PRI’s victory in Tabasco on Oct. 15 had been its first sign of life since the July defeat and was seen as a boost for Tabasco’s outgoing governor, Roberto Madrazo, who had hopes of assuming the leadership of the PRI. Now the fiasco in Tabasco threatens to sink the PRI in renewed strife just when it hoped to be moving toward recovery--and poses a tricky political challenge for President Vicente Fox.

After the federal decision to annul the October election, the outgoing state legislature, dominated by the PRI, hurriedly named Priego interim governor--and adopted a constitutional amendment giving him 18 months in office, supposedly to give him time to organize a fairer gubernatorial race.

The new, almost evenly divided legislature took office Monday, and in a chaotic vote Tuesday it chose Lopez as interim governor--with just six months to stage a new vote.

True to the convoluted nature of southern Mexican politics, both Priego and Lopez come from the PRI. Priego is from the pro-Madrazo faction, while Lopez is seen as more moderate, and his family has close ties to the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD. The left-of-center PRD nominated him.

In the October vote, the PRD managed to come within 7,000 votes of the declared winner, PRI candidate Manuel Andrade, a startling result in a state dominated by the PRI.

By backing a PRI-ista as alternative interim governor, the PRD demonstrated that “we are fighting here for things to be done with fairness, not simply to put in a PRD governor,” said Enrique Fernandez, the state party president.

Although Lopez had backed away temporarily, “the only thing missing is for Adan to take the oath of office,” Fernandez said.

He and other state party leaders were heading to Mexico City early today to join talks with national leaders of the country’s three major parties being mediated by Interior Secretary Santiago Creel.

Thus, the negotiating stage appeared to be shifting from Tabasco politicians to Mexico City, where Fox has consciously avoided any involvement in the dispute.

Fox’s party, the National Action Party, or PAN, is a marginal factor in Tabasco. But in a state evenly split between the PRI and the PRD, support from the PAN could be decisive in a new state election, and local PAN officials have said they would look favorably at an alliance with the PRD against the PRI, in the interests of ending the PRI’s decades-old control here.

Rodulfo Reyes, a freelance political journalist here, said: “Tabasco under Madrazo was the last stronghold of caciquismo,” or rule by a local boss. “If Madrazo doesn’t survive through Priego, the PRI will be finished here. If there is a new election within six months, the opposition will win easily.”

So Priego has plunged aggressively into traditional gubernatorial activities to try to make his appointment stick. At midday Wednesday, hundreds of state bureaucrats lined up patiently at the official governor’s residence for their chance to shake Priego’s hand or, for the lucky ones, be kissed or hugged and slapped on the back.

Those who turned out in the lush gardens of the gubernatorial mansion dismissed the PRD’s attempt to undermine Priego as a political ploy that flouted the rule of law.

David Ituarte Castillo, an official with the state Health Department, said the heavy turnout to see him “shows that however much noise people make opposing him, Enrique Priego is the legitimate governor. Officially, we have just one governor.”

But Sonia Carillo, from the Social Development Department, said she doesn’t believe the crisis is over. “Obviously it worries us all because it means going backward, it means the state will lose a year or a year and a half, and we hope there will be no ruptures among the people of Tabasco.”

Fernando Hernandez, director of information for the outgoing administration, said the state is functioning normally: Taxes are being collected, and licenses are being issued. “Priego is exercising full control,” he said.

But he acknowledged: “It is difficult for us in Tabasco to reach consensus. The people here are very passionate.”