Can’t Buy Them Love

Gift-giving by Mexican political parties to sway votes is a time-honored tradition, one for which grandmother Ana Maria Senturion, her arms full of plastic kitchenware and toys after a party rally Wednesday, is grateful.

She had muscled her way through thick crowds to snag plates, a washtub and a Batman doll handed and thrown out to the thousands gathered at the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s closing campaign ceremony on the Campeche waterfront. The event was the last PRI blowout before Sunday’s nationwide elections, in which voters will choose 500 national legislators, six governors and 365 mayors.

The PRI rally was the largest of many thrown here by a half-dozen political parties, a clear sign that while Mexican politics are modernizing and becoming more pluralistic, many of the old habits remain three years after the PRI lost the presidency to Vicente Fox after its 71-year reign.”I would have voted for all the PRI candidates anyway, but people get excited when they can get a free T-shirt or things for the house,” Senturion said. “For the poor, this means a lot.”

The cornucopia of goodies handed out by the PRI, the National Action Party and others here included caps, rain jackets, food, vegetable seeds, can openers, haircuts, medical advice and amusement park rides.

But it was the PRI that pulled out all the stops, hiring well-known local salsa and norteno musicians to entertain the throngs and festooning every square meter of the bay front with posters and flags. Much is at stake for the PRI, which has run Campeche state since the 1920s. In that time, it has never lost the governorship nor the mayoralty of the state capital, also called Campeche.

Now, in the governor’s race, the PRI’s Jorge Carlos Hurtado is facing strong challenges from the PAN’s Juan Carlos del Rio Gonzalez and the Convergence Party’s Layda Sansores, daughter of a former PRI governor. The Campeche mayor’s race is also up for grabs.

But the enthusiasm of the Campeche crowds may be misleading. Voter apathy is expected to generate the lowest nationwide turnout in nearly a century.

Less than half of the 64 million eligible voters are expected to cast ballots, raising the question of whether giveaways do any good. Mexican voters are changing, analysts say, becoming more cynical, demanding, disillusioned or just plain bored. Staying away from the polls may be their way of showing they want reforms, not tokens.

Also putting off voters is the new profusion of candidates, said local political analyst and TV commentator Francisco Lopez Vargas. Until now, Campeche has never had more than two candidates for governor, but this time no fewer than eight will be on the ballot.

No segment of the local population is more cynical and less apt to vote than Campeche’s shrimp fishermen, whose catch has been decimated by offshore oil drilling and overfishing. Having heard politicians promise relief for 20 years to no avail, they have no interest in trinkets.

“All the candidates offer the same pretty words but don’t deliver. We’ve been forgotten,” said Jose de la Cruz Palma, treasurer of the shrimp fishermen’s federation of cooperatives based in Ciudad del Carmen, about 130 miles west of here.

Since oil was discovered in the Bay of Campeche 25 years ago, the fishermen have suffered because of the junk -- pipes, tanks and cables -- that oil firms have left on the ocean floor, making trawling with nets impossible in many areas.

Politicians periodically promise to force Pemex, the government-owned oil monopoly, to clean up the trash or finance new aquaculture programs. But little aid has materialized.

Still, traditions die hard, and politicians were hopeful that a little last-minute glitz could counteract voter disenchantment. The PRI showed it could still turn out the crowds, drawing 15,000 on Wednesday. The PAN drew 7,000 last Sunday.

PRI volunteer Tania Perez, a 23-year-old university student, said at the rally that such events “make people more participatory. It’s

But Luis Ferrer, news director of the independent Canal Telesur TV station, said many of those attending the PRI event may have had no choice. Many were employees of the state and municipal governments, which account for more than half of all formal employment in Campeche state. Their unions are firmly in the hands of the PRI.

“Even the members of the law school faculty of the university were telling us they were ‘invited’ to appear ... with the implication that their performance reviews were at stake. That was very clear,” he said.

At least two of Campeche’s largest parties -- the Democratic Revolutionary Party and the Convergence Party -- said they were eschewing giveaways and opting for campaigns based on selling voters on reforms.

“Elections should be won with ideas, not checkbooks,” PRD gubernatorial candidate Alvaro Arceo told a noisy crowd of about 300 on Tuesday. “Those who are ruled by the checkbook are slaves.”

In an interview before her final rally Wednesday, Convergence gubernatorial candidate Sansores said: “We want to offer an alternative to old-style politics. It is what Campechanos want.” Fewer than 1,000 supporters turned out for her curtain closer.

Federal laws try to limit giveaways by restricting campaign spending for the most part to money given to the parties by the government. This year, about $600,000 has been distributed to the eight parties running candidates in Campeche state.

But there are loopholes, and the subject of limits elicits winks and smiles among political analysts here. The PRI this year was slapped with a $98-million fine for taking money from the oil workers union to finance its 2000 presidential campaign. President Fox’s PAN party is being investigated for campaign finance violations in the same election.

Schoolteacher Alvaro Zea Morales said no matter what laws are passed, giveaways aren’t going away.

“They are worth nothing, but they are an excuse for people to come down to the center and dance and have a good time,” he said. “What’s important is that now we have more liberty to vote for who we want.”