Battle of Political Outsiders Is Forming

One of Mexico’s most vigorous and unconventional political debates over its future may be about to unfold.

The results of Mexico’s midterm elections confirm that President Vicente Fox is politically finished. His party, the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, lost seats in Congress and gubernatorial races in four of six states. Observers in the United States, perhaps misled by his charisma and popularity, were slow to recognize his political flaws and unraveling authority. The voting further indicated that the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, made a comeback, picking up 15 seats in the lower chamber of Congress. But it was one with feet of clay. The PRI received 2 million fewer votes than it did in the last midterm elections, in 1997, when it lost control of Congress.

The real news out of Mexico is the depth of voters’ discontent with their political choices. Voter abstention has been rising in midterm elections, from 32% in 1991 to 42% in 1997. But last Sunday, a stunning 58% of all registered voters stayed home, a rate never before seen in Mexico. Polls indicated that voters stayed away because they didn’t believe their vote would advance political reform, they were dissatisfied with the political system and they had no confidence in the established parties.

By all measures, the public’s appetite for fundamental change is stronger than ever. The forces that undermined 70 years of PRI rule and opened the door for Fox’s breakthrough candidacy in 2000 are more evident today: A once fast-growing economy has stagnated under Fox; major institutions have been further discredited; and even Fox’s highly touted personal popularity cannot now match that of his PRI predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, at the end of his term.

Political power and the banner of change are lying in the streets in Mexico, waiting for someone to pick them up and make them his own. The stage is set for an unprecedented political contest between “outsiders” that could steal the show in the next presidential election. The two top contenders in the emerging battle of ideas and personalities are Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and Jorge Castaneda, Fox’s former foreign minister. Currently, Castaneda is not affiliated with a party.

The best-known beneficiary of this shifting political landscape is Lopez Obrador, widely known by his initials AMLO. His approval ratings exceed 80%. To secure his party’s presidential nomination, he would have to take on the PRD’s unofficial boss, the legendary Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who reportedly is inclined to seek the presidency a fourth time. Depending on how Lopez Obrador played it, such an attempt might cast him in the role of outsider, much as Fox cast himself in the 2000 election to woo non-PAN voters. Fox was never the choice of PAN leaders, but he organized an independent operation and won the nomination. Then he assembled a coalition of supporters that kept his party at a distance. AMLO also has cultivated an intensely personal relationship with his Mexico City constituents, a dependable source of political support outside his party. But the PRD’s minimal organization outside Mexico City and a handful of states poses a big challenge.

Having resigned his government post in January, Castaneda is the most prominent survivor of the Fox shipwreck. Since then, he’s been testing his reformist message around the country and developing a network of supporters. Castaneda’s standard stump speech stresses a concerted, all-out government effort to clean up Mexico’s judicial system, revamp education, reform the legislative process and even reorganize the presidency. His audiences are chiefly business and professional groups, potential sources of campaign contributions. To lend some credibility to his presidential aspirations, Castaneda needed one of Mexico’s new parties to pick up the required minimum 2% of the vote last Sunday. Convergencia Democratica did, so don’t be surprised to see Castaneda as its presidential nominee, possibly in coalition with other minor parties and organizations.

Managing his mercurial nature, bluntness and inclination to engage in caustic squabbles with the news media and other politicos will be a challenge for Castaneda. If he fails at that, it’s hard to see him relating to the Mexican on the street. But he can consult Fox’s 2000 playbook for lessons in how to develop an appealing communications style.

Since 1988, Mexicans have shown their willingness to turn, suddenly and massively, to an insurgent opposition candidate in presidential elections. In the last two contests, the novel experience of presidential candidates debating on TV played a key role in reordering voter preferences and shifting political momentum. Mexico’s democratic breakthrough might have come in 1994, if Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, the PAN candidate, had been able to build on the surge in the polls that his performance in Mexico’s first presidential debate had earned him. Six years later, Fox crushed his competitors in his first debate, then saved his imperiled candidacy from near-disaster in the second by appealing to Mexicans to join him in making history.

In the national debate that’s beginning, AMLO and Castaneda have more than a shot at defining the terms of Mexico’s future.