Is the party over? Why Mexico's political scene is jumping
Grayson, Geoge W
George W. Grayson IS THE PARTY OVER? Political pluralism in Mexico Caesars and generals returning to Imperial Rome following military conquests detailed husky-voiced young men to jog alongside...
...After monopolizing the presidency and dominating the Mexican Congress since 1929 often through coercion, corruption, and chicanery the pri came to regard its hegemonic position as preordained...
...Ultimately, Zedillo vetoed such machinations, which if carried out could have chilled private investment in a year when the GDP should shoot up 5 percent amid falling prices...
...panista Carlos Medina Plascencia took the gavel as chairman of the key Rules and Internal Governance Committee...
...Privately, their spokesmen admit that these extremely popular proposals are designed to regain momentum lost by their party when it finished third in the midsummer competition for the capital's city hall a race it was supposed to win...
...Political pluralism in Mexico Caesars and generals returning to Imperial Rome following military conquests detailed husky-voiced young men to jog alongside their chariots...
...Facing down the PRI has greatly emboldened bloc leaders...
...As a result, the new Congress met on schedule: Munoz Ledo, the opposition bloc's choice, assumed the Chamber's presidency...
...Nevertheless, unless his floundering party assigns slogan-shouting youths to run alongside its official vehicles to remind its mucky mucks of the pitfalls of hubris and internecine warfare, thirty-eight months from now Zedillo may find himself turning over the keys to Los Pinos to an opposition politician...
...Soon after the election, Porfirio Munoz Ledo, coordinator of the 125-deputy prd delegation, phoned his pri counterpart, Arturo Nunez Jimenez, to explore mutual interests in the next Congress which would convene on September 1. In reaction to Nunez's vague response, "I'll get back to you in a week or two," Munoz Ledo turned to pan, possessed of 121 seats, and the small labor and environmental parties that together commanded 12 seats...
...At the same time, the pri lost its majority in the 500-mem-ber Chamber of Deputies but continued its dominance in the Senate, where only a quarter of the seats were open...
...Meanwhile, Munoz Ledo and his prd colleague, Mexico City mayor-elect Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, have excoriated economic liberalization for sparking high unemployment, small-business failures, and the widening gap between "haves" and "have-nots...
...Regrettably, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) never recruited anyone to provide a similar reality-check to its political paladins...
...Protracted negotiations among the disparate groups crystallized into a four-party opposition bloc...
...Nonetheless, now that the prd enjoys a position of power, it seems reluctant to trumpet a return to the protectionism, statism, and subsidies that reigned until the mid-1980s...
...George W. Grayson, who teaches government at the College of William & Mary, is the author of Mexico: From Corporatism to Pluralism...
...Indeed, priistas tended to view their major adversaries the center-right National Action Party (pan) and the leftist-nationalist Democratic Revolutionary Party (prd) as conniving devils rather than the loyal opposition...
...After the smoke clears, the run-up to the next presidential election will unleash centrifugal forces as both the prd and pan try to oust the pri from Los Pinos, the presidential palace...
...As frenzied crowds cheered for the exultant heroes, the runners would scream into their ears, "You are not a god, you are not a god...
...Undoubtedly, interpar-ty frictions will spring up in the course of ten gubernatorial elections scattered throughout 1998...
...Thus Munoz Ledo and Cardenas are emphasizing gradual, "prudent" steps to uplift the 50 percent of their countrymen who live as ragpickers in fetid slums or forlorn villages...
...Zedillo delivered an upbeat, statistics-laden address to the nation...
...Had voters elected a president instead of legislators in 1997, the pri would have won, having garnered a plurality of the ballots cast (39.1 percent...
...Then, they could back educational, health, housing, and job-training programs for the poor on whom Zedillo has pledged to spare 56 percent of his program budget...
...In fact, President Zedillo evinces more interest in sustained growth than in politics...
...Should they pass, Zedillo and Ortiz Arana will turn heaven and earth to kill them in the Senate, lest a sharp loss of revenue compromise the size and pace of the economic recovery...
...If so, will it attack privatizations, nafta, and other neoliberal policies adopted over the last twelve years...
...Efforts to reverse the local version of perestroika could frighten investors, curb the incipient economic growth, and darken the now "moderate" prd's chances of capturing the presidency...
...Now they seem determined to shed Congress's image as a collection of single-term lickspittles eager to ingratiate themselves with the executive branch with a view to seeking a job when their terms expire...
...Although talking about an "historic validation of the popular will," the four parties will probably emphasize what could be described as a funnel strategy...
...In view of their sagging fortunes, many priistas in the Chamber of Deputies may support populist initiatives...
...namely, they will identify common ground on relatively uncontroversial issues before carefully broadening their agenda...
...When the bloc preserved its unity, Chuayffet, Nunez, and Senate Majority Leader Genovevo Figueroa even toyed with the idea of boycotting the September 1 organizational session or setting up their own Chamber of Deputies...
...Only a Mexican Dr...
...Next, they may fine-tune the despised 15 percent Value-Added Tax (IVA) by reducing the levy on essentials while raising the charge on luxuries...
...How will the presence of a more assertive Congress influence the presidential election in 2000...
...Pangloss could expect the alliance to endure for more than a year or so...
...The two now want to deepen and expand privatizations, even as they continue to impel freer trade within the context of nafta and other accords...
...Harcourt-Brace...
...Thus, Government Secretary Emilio Chuayffet Chemor the country's virtual prime minister and an aspirant to succeed President Ernesto Zedillo when he leaves office in three years appeared incredulous when the prd rolled to a two-to-one victory in the July 6 Mexico City mayoral race...
...and Nunez and company sulked in their seats...
...They'll probably begin by scrutinizing various presidential discretionary funds...
...Despite its initial success, will the opposition bloc maintain its cohesion...
...He and Finance Secretary Guillermo Ortiz Martinez, another presidential hopeful, have turned around an economy savaged by the toxic 1994-96 recession, a major factor in the anti-PRl vote...
...Even though the bloc represented 259 deputies compared to the pri's 239, Chuayffet indulged in the illusion that the variegated coalition would collapse in a few days...
...With respect to NAFTA, the prd now recommends minor adjustments rather than a sweeping overhaul of the pact...
...On the other hand, the pan has shown more aggressiveness on economic questions, recommending for example lowering the IVA to 10 percent and the income tax from 34 to 30 percent...
Vol. 124 • October 1997 • No. 17
