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April 3, 2004
Real Wild West
Political Campaigns
By Richard
Baldwin/HispanicVista.com
This is, the last time I looked, the year
of 2004. In the US, it is a presidential
election year. In México, however, the
next presidential election takes place in
2006.
In the US, things
really started up in the beginning of
this year and this also portends to be
one of the more acrimonious and expensive
elections in recent history. Here in
México, things have also heated up
considerably at the beginning of this
year . . . two years early. But in
our case, it is beginning to look like a
full-fledged riot.
In México there are
three main political parties: the PRD
(center left), the PRI (center and former
ruling party of 71 years), and the PAN
(center right and present ruling party).
There is also the Green Party, by title
the party of environmental issues, but
more as a "swing" party to act
as a power broker.
The PRI was formed
1929 as a collation of a bunch of parties
to bring about some order to the chaotic
Mexican political scene . . . and to
build the base of a power structure. And
it worked. In the PRI days, the power
structure in México was described as a
three-legged stool. One leg was the
government, one leg was the CTM (the main
labor union) and third the business
interests. On this stool sat the PRI, in
reality the single power base of México.
What developed was described by many as
"the perfect dictatorship".
This was strictly one party rule.
As the world moved
more into democracy, some concessions
were made to give the appearance of
democracy. Small "opposition"
parties were allowed to exist and fill a
few seats in the congress. But with no
real voice in things.
In the labor
movement, they created another union to
give the appearance of a democratic labor
movement. The Workers Union was in fact
controlled and funded by the CTM. Ah, the
beauty of this machine! Mayor Dailey of
old Chicago would have drooled over the
efficiency of the three-legged stool.
But in time, partly
due to a political machine grown too
confident and changes in the world around
us, things began to disintegrate. The PRI
lost the competitive edge necessary to
get votes and represent the needs of the
people. And then came 1988.
Cuauhtemoc
Cárdenas, the son of a popular past
president and named after the last Aztec
king, ran on the PRD ticket against the
hand picked PRI candidate, Carlos
Salinas. When it looked like Cárdenas
was going to win, the national computer
system tabulating the votes mysteriously
shut down. And Salinas was declared the
winner. The outgoing president of that
time, de la Madrid, has alluded to this
in his recently published autobiography,
but has peddled his bicycle backwards on
this issue recently.
After that, under
both presidents Salinas and Zedillo, a
lot of far reaching changes were
instituted to bring México real
democracy. Our present president Fox was
a beneficiary of those changes. But
remember that we are talking about a
democracy that is only a dozen or so
years old.
Now we have the
specter of real down and dirty fighting
for the next presidential election.
The PRD has been
ripped apart by television movies showing
party officials accepting bails of
obvious graft cash. It would seem that
someone was concerned about the PRD mayor
of México, Lopez Obrador, gaining too
much popularity for the upcoming
presidential election. He is (or was) by
far the most favored for next president
in the polls.
The PRI, in the
meantime, is showing large fractures in
its formerly monolithic organization with
purges going on and resignations of key
members. The problem with the PRI by
modern standards is that it tries to
cover too much political ground, from one
extreme to the other.
And the PAN has been
implicated in the TV movie shows by
giving the films to the TV stations.
Investigations are ongoing against top
officials in that party.
And last, but not
least, the beginning of this TV series
was the implication of the young head of
the Green party in a bribe scandal
involving the construction of a major
resort hotel . . . in which he seemed to
be selling the necessary environmental
approvals for construction.
It will be
interesting to see whom and what party
wins in 2006, but in the meantime isn't
democracy fun?
___________________________________________________
Richard N.
Baldwin T., a HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com)
contributing columnist, lives in
Tlalnepantla, Edo de México E-mail at: R1041643422@aol.com
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