May 19, 2003
Representation
without Voting
By Jorge Mújica
In an ironic twist
to México’s denial to allow the
vote from abroad, the Democratic
Revolution Party launched on May Day a
new campaign in favor of Mexicans abroad.
Ten migrants from Texas, California and Illinois
became candidates for Congress in the
mid-term July 6th election.
It is ironic
because it reverses the old principle of
“no taxation without representation.”
In this case, without voting, Mexican migrantes
could gain representation in the federal
Chamber of Deputies. Their obvious first
and more important task, should they get
elected, would be to guarantee the right
to vote from abroad and to elect
representatives in the general election
of 2006.
It’s just
a matter of imagination, they say.
Members of the PRD (by its acronym in
Spanish), discussed that the Mexican law
sets either one of two conditions to be a
candidate for congress: to have been born
in the district for which representation
is sought, or to have lived in the
district for at least 6 months prior to
the election. Obviously, the second
requirement could not be fulfilled by any
migrant, but the first one is a given
one; everyone was born somewhere in
México.
Besides the
300 congressmen elected in the same
number of districts, México elects 200
other congressmen, based in the
percentage of votes obtained by each
party. It’s a political math formula
to avoid a supermajority by any one party
in Congress. Those 200 congressmen do not
belong to a particular electoral
district, but rather to a region composed
of six states. Migrant candidates did not
have any problem qualifying for those
candidacies, and their election will not
depend on the non permissible vote from
abroad, but rather from people voting in
México.
The
bouncing vote
Rather than
“swinging votes,” what the PRD
is trying is to bounce an opinion that
influences the vote, from non-voting
immigrants in the United States to their
voting families in México.
The campaign
launched by the PRD is called “Vote
For Me.” It mainly consists in
having U.S. Mexican migrants call their
families in México and remind them that
voting from abroad is not possible, so
those in México should vote for the PRD
since it is the party that may get them
representation in the Chamber of
Deputies.
It’s
twice as difficult, since it is not
possible to talk directly with the
voters, but the strategy is not new. In
the year 2000 then candidate Vicente Fox
developed a network of “Friends of
Fox” in the United Stated which paid
and distributed, among other things, a
long distance telephone card that before
making the connection to México callers
heard the candidate asking migrants to
convince their families to “vote for
change,” which was his political
slogan. As a less expensive campaign, the
PRD in the USA is printing thousands of
stickers to place on public phones
reminding migrants to convince their
families to vote for the PRD on July 6.
From the
“Migrantgate” to the Dual
Nationality
But it has not
been easy for migrants to get the
candidacies.
Despite the
ideological consensus that migrants
should vote and be represented in the
Mexican congress, the Mexican parties are
not ready to face the reality of such
voting and representation.
When PRD
delegates from New York, California, Illinois,
Texasand Washington State showed up at
the five electoral conventions held in
five different states in México, their
participation was challenged by the
mainstream political expressions of the
party. In a political convention where
each vote and each delegate has been
carefully counted, the sudden presence of
dozens of new delegates threw all math to
hell.
The
participation of the “foreign legion”,
as some politicians dubbed the U.S.
delegations, was compared to a “migrantgate”.
There were accusations of fraud and
illegality, of lack of representation, of
irregularity as party assemblies. One
convention delegate went as far as
stating that delegates from the U.S.
should not be allowed to vote because
they were “illegals” and people
that were breaking the U.S. laws.
None of the
negative arguments convinced the
majority, and the delegations were
allowed full participation and voting
rights, but some political forces within
the PRD had to rearrange their forces and
votes in order not to lose candidacies to
which they thought there was already
agreement.
As soon as the
PRD announced its migrant candidacies,
the Institutional Revolution Party, which
governed México for 7 decades, started
its own process not to be left behind.
Initially the PRI sought the candidacies
of two prominent Mexican businessmen
residing in the United States, but a few
days later recanted because of the status
of dual nationality of its candidates.
Since 1998, in
the wake of the Proposition 187, México
has allowed dual nationality to its
citizens, but the law is unclear in so
many aspects. When dealing with the
Constitution and migrant’s
candidacies, contradictions and legal
loop-holes came into view. According to
the Constitution, elected public offices
should be reserved to those “Mexicans
born in the territory and not holding
other nationality,” but according to
the Nationality Law, those offices
reserved for non-dual nationals should be
expressly indicated. Migrants contend
that the provision may be there, but
there is no law that “expressly
indicate” which offices are not
opened for dual nationals.
Despite their
efforts and closed meetings with the PRI
National leadership and a support
campaign from several migrants’
organizations, the efforts did not meet
any success. In the middle of the debate,
the PRI considered nominating the former
Consul General in Los Angeles as a “migrant”
candidate. In the end, it nominated no
migrants.
The National
Action Party (PAN) rejected outright any
efforts from migrants to be nominated. It
clearly established in its rules that
Mexicans living abroad are to be
considered only “sympathizers,”
not members of the party. Thus,
pro-panista migrants had no chance to be
nominated.
The sole
exception to the rule is a former migrant
who moved to México City after 20 years
in the United States, and was nominated
for a city’s district. Nevertheless,
his candidacy created an uproar at a PAN
meeting when his campaign manager, also a
former migrant student from Yale asked
him something in English and he candidate
answer also in English. For some
panistas, this was a clear example of the
“lack of loyalty” and proof
that once someone became a migrant, he
will lose connection with his motherland.
In the end,
only the PRD is nominating migrants as
candidates for congressmen. It will be a
tough job to get them elected, but the
party expects to advance in a strategy
for the 2006 presidential election when,
so they say, migrants will have finally
conquered their right to cast ballots
from abroad.
____________________________________________
Jorge Mujica is with
the Illinois Executive Committee of the
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD-Mexico)
For more information
on the PRD in the United States you can
visit www.prdcalifornia.org,
or contact the PRD in Chicago, at prdchicago@yahoo.com
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