Guest Column

By Kenneth Emmond

Mexico City Herald/Universal

August 8, 2005

 

Can anyone stop Roberto Madrazo?

 

Maybe not, but a Gang of Five, better known as Tucom (All United Against Madrazo), thinks a committee can thwart his quest to become next the presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) — and perhaps the next president of Mexico.

 

The five Tucom candidates agreed to run a mini-campaign to see which of them has the best chance to defeat the Man to Beat, after which all would support the winner.

 

The group used no fewer than three well-known pollsters — Mitofsky, Parametrìa, and Ipsos-Bimsa.

 

All the losers must support the winner, so it's a severe test of political egos, but it could turn the PRI's internal process into a horse race — if none gives in to the temptation to accept promises of post-election positions from Madrazo.

 

One contender, PRI Senate coordinator Enrique Jackson, described the pact as "a gentlemen's agreement."

 

Results of the Tucom runoff were announced Thursday, and the winner is Arturo Montiel, 61.

 

The other three aspirants were: Coahuila governor Enrique Martínez; former Hidalgo governor Manuel Ángel Nuñez; and Tomás Yarringon, former governor of Tamaulipas.

 

A horse race this may be, but it would be better described as a dinosaur race: Both candidates are from the old school, steeped in the political philosophy that the PRI is the only party that should rule Mexico.

 

Just last month Montiel oversaw the resounding triumph of his protégé, Enrique Peña Nieto, who was elected his successor.

 

Peña Nieto's opponents say the election was won the old-fashioned way — with vote-buying, flagrant use of government resources, and a total disregard of spending caps on advertising — but the results will likely stand.

 

Montiel is also criticized for funneling state revenues to municipal election candidates, and for spending $38 million pesos on 67 foreign trips during his tenure.

 

These dubious practices may stand him in good stead running against a man like Madrazo, who's widely believed to have won the 1994 election to become governor of Tabasco by spending many times more than the $3 million spending cap, though the charges were never proved.

 

Officially, Montiel and other high-level PRI members vigorously deny that the anti-Madrazo campaign is anything but healthy intra-party competition.

In his victory speech he repeated the party mantra that unity is essential for the PRI to regain the presidency that it lost in 2000. Madrazo agrees.

 

This implies that if Madrazo becomes party candidate, Montiel and the other Tucom contenders would support him. It remains to be seen whether the reverse would be true.

 

Why does the party division exist? Why can't the PRI just elect Madrazo, who has poured his energy into generating wins in state elections?

 

There are several reasons. Madrazo's abrasive personality has won him a lot of enemies both within the party and out of it.

 

In the party's 2001 presidential election, he engaged in old-fashioned hypocrisy. After making speeches about how the PRI leopard has changed its spots, he engaged in vote-buying and exotic vote-counting to engineer his win over rival Beatriz Paredes.

 

Madrazo has also been known to hang out with some pretty shady characters.

 

One of his good friends during the 1990s, when he was Tabasco governor, was Mario Villanueva, then-governor of Quintana Roo. Villanueva currently is serving a long prison sentence on drug-related charges. Understandably, this makes some PRI members queasy.

 

Perhaps the biggest doubt of all comes from beyond the party: Madrazo continues to trail in public opinion polls. He's 18 points behind former Mexico City mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution.

 

As party president, Madrazo continues to enjoy insider advantages. For example, the PRI website has never acknowledged the existence of Tucom.

Still, however, as he tries to stack the deck, Madrazo must contend with a wild card: Esther Gordillo, the most powerful woman in the PRI.

 

In her other role as head of 1.6 million schoolteachers in Mexico, she can deliver a lot of votes to whoever she chooses to support — and it's unlikely to be the man who tried to destroy her political career.

 

When Madrazo became party president, Gordillo was his secretary-general. Later, when Gordillo met with President Vicente Fox to negotiate passage of important reforms in Congress, Madrazo, who wanted none of the reforms passed unless and until the PRI is in power, punished her by stripping her of her position as party leader in the Chamber of Deputies.

 

But he could not remove her from her position as secretary-general, and under the PRI constitution, she will automatically succeed him as president once he resigns to be a candidate.

 

Gordillo has not yet indicated where she will throw her support. The fact that she may have a few procedural tricks up her sleeve is likely giving Madrazo some sleepless nights; indeed, it caused him to postpone resigning from the PRI presidency.

 

So, the candidacy race within the PRI will be great theater, but whoever wins will be a person to watch — as a possible winner, but also as someone likely to try to turn the clock back if he becomes president.

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Kenneth Emmond is a freelance journalist and economist who has lived in Mexico since 1995. Kemmond00@yahoo.com

Article at: http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/web_columnas_sup.detalle?var=24144

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