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REPORTS: MEXICO |
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Election
Results Point to Rocky Road Ahead for
Fox
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - Sunday's mid-term
elections in Mexico marked a major
setback for President Vicente Fox, who
now faces three uphill years. But the
image of politicians in general, and
democracy itself, were also dealt a
blow, according to local analysts.
In the first national elections held
since the end of the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI)'s 1929-2000
reign, turnout was lower than in
decades, with just over 40 percent of
the country's 65 million registered
voters heading to the polls.
Of the relatively few who did vote,
36.3 percent cast their ballots for
PRI candidates, 30.6 percent for
representatives of the governing
National Action Party (PAN), and 17.8
percent for candidates of the leftist
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD),
the Federal Electoral Institute
reported Monday.
That means that just as before, no
party will have an absolute majority
in parliament.
Analysts underlined that only six of
every 10 voters who chose Fox as
president supported PAN candidates
this time around.
The message from the Mexican people
was clearly that - politicians have a
bad image, and that they are
dissatisfied with the government,”
researcher Alfredo Macias, with the
social studies department of the
Autonomous National University of
Mexico, told IPS.
But observers say the results are
unlikely to change the balance of
power in the second half of Fox's
term, which ends in 2006.
In the first three years of the
president's mandate, no party or
coalition held an absolute majority in
Congress, and in the second half of
his term it will be even harder for
legislators to make deals and reach
agreements, Benito Nacif, director of
political studies at the Centre for
Economic Research and Teaching, told
IPS.
Congress will reach few, and probably
relatively insignificant, accords on
the structural reforms that the
country needs, because the main focus
of the parties will be competing for
support with a view to the 2006
presidential elections, he predicted.
Mexicans voted Sunday for all 500
members of the lower house of
Congress, 227 of whom will be members
of the PRI, 16 more than in the
previous legislature, and 158 of whom
will belong to the PAN,
whichrepresents a loss of 49 seats for
the governing party.
Of the remaining seats, 100 will be
held by the PRD, 49 more than in the
previous legislature, while the rest
will be in the hands of
representatives of small political
parties.
Voters also chose the governors of six
states. According to the preliminary
results, Fox's party held onto two of
the states, while four went to the
PRI.
And of the four local legislative
councils up for election, the PRI won
three.
Besides the huge increase in its
representation in parliament, the PRD
scored a triumph in the capital, where
the party already holds the office of
mayor, and where it won an absolute
majority in the legislative assembly,
as well as 14 of the 16
municipalities.
The PRD counts among its ranks Mexico
City Mayor Andrés López, who is
today the most popular politician,
according to the polls, and is taking
shape as a serious contender for the
presidency in 2006.
ôThe political agenda will now
revolve around the presidential race,
but people will also be assessing the
usefulness of Mexico's ‘new
democracy',” said Macias.
During the PRI's seven decades in
power, its electoral victories were
routinely suspected of being the
product of fraud. In that sense, Fox's
triumph not only brought about a
situation in which the parties take
turns in power, but also generated a
change in the way voters perceive
Mexican democracy.
However, Fox has been unable to push
through the fiscal and labour reforms,
as well as the overhauling of the
power industry, that he promised in
his election campaign. Nor has he
gotten the parties to sign a proposed
pact for designing an agenda for
national development.
ôThe institutions of democracy and
Mexican political culture have yet to
mature, in order to facilitate accords
and attenuate discrepancies and
differences,” said Nacif.
In a 2002 survey carried out by
Latinobarómetro, a Chilean firm that
conducts research on democracy in
Latin America, respondents in Mexico
were among those least satisfied with
the performance of their democratic
system, ranking 13th out of 17th
countries in that category.
In that poll, nine out of 10 Mexicans
said they were mistrustful of what
their parties said and did.
Mexican ôcitizens see democracy as a
competitive system that needs
competitors, but they do not identify
with the existing players,”
political scientist Jesús
Silva-Herzog wrote in a column for the
daily newspaper Reforma.
”Democracy might be our favourite
political sport, but the teams
disputing the championship do not
impress us,” he said, adding that
the disenchantment with the country's
political leaders grows when the
economy is in the doldrums.
Fox pulled off his landmark victory in
2000 with a pledge to bring about
change and achieve seven percent
annual Gross Domestic Product growth.
But in 2001, growth actually shrank by
0.4 percent, and in 2002 reached only
one percent, while just 2.5 percent
growth is projected this year.
In their remarks on Monday, Fox and
the leaders of the PRI, PAN and PRD
concurred that it was time for working
together and reaching agreements, for
the good of democracy and the Mexican
people.
The president said ôthe voters' will
is clear,” and the public supports
political actors from several
currents, which means ôit is time for
consensus, for accords.”
”Three years from now we will see
whether our politicians have been
capable of producing results despite
the existing pluralism and the
legitimate ambition to win the
presidency in 2006,” said Macias.
In Nacif's view, Sunday's elections
made it clear that the end of the PRI
era and of that party's
authoritarianism was not sufficient to
guarantee the flourishing of
democracy, which is still in need of
major advances before it can truly
come into its own.
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