For the first time in Mexico’s history, citizens who live outside its borders will be able to exercise their right to choose the next president. Unfortunately I don’t believe most people outside of Mexico — and a few who still live there — care much anymore.
Why? Because in the five years since we elected Vicente Fox — the first opposition president in 71 years — nothing much has happened. Sure, Fox’s administration ended the long reign of the dreaded Republican Institutional Party (PRI), which destroyed the Mexican economy. And that’s a good thing. But even as the conservative Acción Nacional Party (PAN) has taken charge of the presidency, the PRI still controls Congress and the Senate. And it opposed almost every reform Fox proposed, including his energy bill, which would have allowed private investing in the government-controlled oil and electricity industries. That reform alone would have forced bureaucrats to get off their butts and make a better profit. When the PRI also opposed measures that would have made foreign investing and labor laws less complicated, many of the big companies that planned to set up camp in Mexico ended up going to places like China and India.
Fox may not be the brightest leader, but he’s been a victim of circumstances. A former supervisor for Coca-Cola’s Latin American operations, he believed in operating the Mexican government like a private company. Big mistake. You can’t fire 2 million useless bureaucrats just like that. During Fox’s term, poverty levels have been reduced, but we still have 17 percent of a population of 107 million living in poverty (people subsisting on less than $4 a day) and 4 percent in extreme poverty (those living on $1 or less a day). Another 5 percent of the population (most of whom lived in poverty conditions) has fled to the US in search of better opportunities.
As the July 2 election approaches, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, former governor of Mexico City and a member of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), a group of left-leaning PRI deserters, leads the latest polls at 29 percent. López Obrador’s success is based on his social policies that focus on helping the needy. Since populism is making a big comeback in Latin America, the formula is working. He’ll fight Congress and make big headlines, but it remains to be seen whether his policies are really for the greater good of the people, or just hot air disguised as populism and ends up benefiting no one but a few of Lopez Obrador’s friends.
The runner-up, at 28 percent in the polls, is PAN candidate and Fox successor Felipe Calderón, who is too prone to openly rub elbows with big business, a big strike against him with a public that wants and needs real change.
The third candidate is the PRI’s Roberto Madrazo, former governor of Tabasco whose father also served as Tabasco’s governor. Tabasco is the state that controls half of Mexico’s oil operations. If Mexico’s poor masses don’t want to go back to the old establishment, that’s exactly what Madrazo, with a 21 percent voter preference, represents. But he’s the resurrection of a fractured PRI that still has a loyal voter base, especially among those who have not seen the improvements in living conditions Fox promised six years ago.
Each of the three candidates have basically the same chance of winning. But regardless of the results, Mexican voters know that their living conditions will not get better for a long time. That’s because, now more than ever, the health of Mexico’s economy depends on how it fits into the global economy, something none of these candidates seem to have a clue about. Also, in order to achieve economic growth, whoever wins must work toward the common good and not individual power, ego and wealth. That is not likely to happen in Mexico.
Hernan Mena, a native of Mexico, is associate editor of the regional Hispanic weekly newspaper, Que Pasa.
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2006.
