PRI-historic politics

MEMBERS OF THE OLD GUARD within Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as the PRI) take a perverse amount of pride at being called dinosaurs, but the truth is that the entire party, which ruled Mexico for seven decades until its defeat in the 2000 presidential election, is a dinosaur

teetering, thankfully, on the verge of extinction.

Mexico will elect a new president -- Vicente Fox cannot run for reelection -- in July. In a three-way race for the office, the PRI’s Roberto Madrazo is trailing Mexico City’s leftist former mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Felipe Calderon, a conservative candidate from Fox’s party. This is a heartening sign of maturity for Mexican democracy.

Fox’s improbable triumph in 2000 over a party that had ruled Mexico since 1929 made him an instant global celebrity, but his ensuing presidency has been somewhat of a disappointment. He has been unable to deliver on the high expectations that swept him into office because, among other reasons, his party lacked a majority in the legislature. Disenchantment with Fox, the PRI’s organizational prowess and its control of many local and state governments raised concerns that the Fox administration could prove to be merely a short interruption in the PRI’s stranglehold on the presidency.

But a majority of Mexicans, at least three months in advance of the election, still seem fed up with the PRI’s boundless cynicism. Regardless of whether one agrees with Lopez Obrador or Calderon, they represent identifiable ideas and positions. The PRI, despite its stale revolutionary rhetoric, continues to stand for little more than tactical opportunism. It is a party whose sole idea has long been “whatever it takes to stay in power.”

Madrazo is a poster child for the party’s deserved image problems. As Times staff writer Sam Enriquez reported this month, Mexicans are no longer willing to overlook the fact that a lifetime public servant such as Madrazo -- himself the son of a big-time PRI politico -- lives in a 14,000-square-foot mansion on a 3.6-acre estate. The former governor of the state of Tabasco owns four other homes, and his fleet of vehicles includes a Porsche and a BMW. Madrazo’s early political godfather was Carlos Hank Gonzalez, a notoriously wealthy Mexico City mayor.

Madrazo’s campaign rhetoric is a Michael Dukakis-like ode to the virtues of competence. But his party is so tainted, and his own last name so associated with the corrupt past, that his campaign literature merely trumpets “Roberto,” as if he were a rock star or a Brazilian soccer player. Or a dinosaur.