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Mexico's 2009 Mid-term elections

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D'kian

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Next July 5th Mexicans will vote for the lower chamber of Mexico's congress, roughly translated as the Chamber of Deputies, as well as for governors and municipal presidents (roughly county chiefs) in some states, including mexico City (where the terminology and politics are more complex).

Mexico has several political phobias born off the 1910 Revolution. The "Revolution" was really a civil war which lasted from 1910 til 1921. I won't go into the story of the Revolution, though it's essential for understanding modern Mexico, but I will mention the slogan that accompanied its launch was "Effective suffrage, no re-election." Ever since then all elective offices in Mexico are exclusively one-term deals.

In the case of the chamber of Deputies and the Senate, both state and federal, this results in one important consequence: politicians are not dependent on their constituents for continued career advancement. I dare say the vast majority of the country does not know who represnets their districts (I certainly don't). Also every three years you vote someone new to allegedly represent you.

Therefore the only way to judge what candidate to vote for is to see what their parties are propposing.

The offerings aren't good.

There are three main parties: the National Action Party (PAN) the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Here's a rough litsing of their positions:

The PAN is the current ruling party because it won the last two presidential election (in 2000 and 2006) and holds the most seats in Congress (but nowhere close to a majority). It's supposed to be pro-business. To a certain extent it is, but that merely means it's less anti-business than other parties. Their latest attempt at tax reform wound up saddling us with double income taxation, not to mention taxes on cash deposits and a more complex tax code.

The PRD is squarely on the left. That's good, because at elast you know where they really stand. Their membership is a mix of "old left" and "new left." In Mexico the "old left" is the one that wants to nationalize everything and destroy free trade. The "new left" jsut wants to tax and regulate business out of existence, while using the private sector to prop up the state.

The PRI is the party that held absolute power since the 30s until the early 90s. By absolute I mean absolute. All elective offices all over the country, from President down to dog catcher, were "won" by PRI candidates exclusively. Over time it oscilated between new and old left, and even to some actual liberty. It was a PRI president, Carlos Salinas, who sold off the state's phone monopoly and opened the telecom industry to competition, and sho started NAFTA negotiations with the US and Canada. His PRI hand-picked successor, Ernesto Zedillo, finished NAFTA and further liberalized the conomy.

Lest you think the PRI is a good alternative, rest assured it's not. For one thing it's always been highly corrupt. Many of the state companies Salinas privatized went to his cronies, who paid kickbacks and later did him favors (like financing candidates in lesser elections, providing him with favorable media coverage, etc). For another the party's ideology si simple: obtain and keep power by any means necessary. If that means liberalizing business, then it does. If it means nationalizing industries (all PRI presidents but the two I mentioned), or the oil industry (Lazaro Cardenas in the 30s) or the banks (Jose Lopez Portillo in 82), or the dollar bank acounts of private investors (Lopez Portillo again in 82, his last year thank God), then it does.

Right now the popular mood is against further liberty and more state action (something I want to get into later). So the PRI candidates are not promoting liberty of any sort. Nor real statism. No, the PRI campaign is "We know how to govern." They don't say how they would govern.

Then there are the small parties which elect a few deputies by allying themselves with the big parties. The biggest bunch is tied to the PRD and squarely on the left. The Green Party is tied to the PRI. As yet no one's tied with the PAN.

The Green party is promoting reinstating the death penalty for murder, particuarly for the murder of kidnap victims (many such victims are murdered after ransom is paid). The death penalty is another political phobia in here. The mere proposal to debate the merits unleashed a minor firestorm of moral condemnation on the Green party in the media and congress. Yet it's proven somewhat popular among the electorate. This last isn't surprising when crime is the most important issue to many.

I don't support the death penalty in Mexico, not when I know how justice is dispensed here (long story). But I do support talking about it because it keeps the high crime rate in people's minds.

That is the one issue I'd vote for. Alas few candidates are making anythign out of it.

In fact there is so much disgust with politicians these days that there are movements to cast null ballots. THe idea is to invalidate your ballot on purpose (leaving it blank, voting for two or mroe candidates for the same office, drawing an X accross the whole ballot sheet, writing-in a fictional chcracter or dead celebrity, etc). THe purpose would be to tell the politicians "We dont' want any of you."

My choices now are to vote for the lesser evil (as soonas I figure out which one that is) or casting a null vote. I'd do the latter in a heart-beat if I though enough other coters would do so. But I don't think null votes will go past the usual 2 or 3 percent. Most people won't take the trouble to go to a voting stattion jsut to cast a null vote. If they want to vote for no one, they'll just not vote at all.

Later I'll talk about the new campaign laws and how they are working out. The squeaky wheel got all the grease.

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As a result of allegations by the PRD after the election of 2006, the law governing the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) were changed drastically. Up to 06 the IFE was a refferee of the electoral process. Now it is a censor of political campaigns.

Among other things, the new law forbids political parties from buying any air time at all on TV or radio. Instead is gives "official air time" to the parties for free (the official air time is a portion of each hour that the federal government can demand from any broadcaster for any reason at any time; usually these time went unused and were "demanded" only sporadically). The law also forbids any private citizen, company, organization or entity from placing any kind of electoral publicity of any kind. Finally the new law forbids negative ads.

This means all radio stations and TV channels are swamped with electoral advertising. I'd say about one third of ad time is electoral in nature, be it by the various aprties hustling for votes, or by the IFE urging any kind of vote.

The gist of the campaigns by the three major paries is as follows:

The PAN (National Action Party) has somewhat upbeat ads reminding people of president Calderon's actions. They make lots of reference to sucessful fight against drug dealers (yeah, successful), that the financial crisis was not Calderon's fault and it's not hitting us as hard as if someone else were in charge (prove it), and a host of other things.

The PRD, despite the ban on negative ads, keeps accusing the PAN of stealing the 06 presidential election, still not supplying a shred of proof for the claim. It also alleges, again without any supporting evidence, we'd all be better off if they'd won last time around.

The PRI is even worse. Their campaign is that attitude is all that matters. One radio ad has an announcer narrating part of a soccer game where the Mexican team gets a penalty shot. "And the nation unites in one single thought!" the announcer says. The thought, supplied by sequential voices is "he's going to miss." Next we hear what the player about to do the shot is thinking "I'm going to make it." And of course he makes it. Finally a different anouncer says "Attitude is al that really matters. Vote PRI. Proven experience. New Attitude."

The meaning is two-fold: 1) wishing will make it so, 2) the PRI ruled unchallenged and uninterupted for over 70 years (see post above), and in the process perfected corruption to a fine art; now their claim is "we're still the party with governing experience, but we won't be as corrupt anymore."

If you believe that I've got a bridge I'd like to sell....

Seriously, all parties are corrupt. The PAN somewhat less so, but there's no difference in principle. In any case all major parties favor an altruistic government big time.

The smaller parties, in fact, are the ones making some serious propposals. As I noted the Green party is propposing the death penalty (no chance in hell of ever passing). The Social-Democrat Party (PSD) is propposing legalizing drugs, and funding a network of rehab centers all over the nation.

And I still haven't decided who to vote for. These are mid-term elections that will affect Congress and some local races. Thus far I plan to vote for the PAN candidate for municipal president (a near equivalent to mayor of a suburb), but only because the PRI candidate si from a family that has held a stranglehold on Mexico State for decades. For the rest I'll probably cast a blank ballot.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The results are in.

First, the null vote movement did accomplish something. Nationwide null votes were about 5.5% of the total. Assume a 2.5% to 3% null vote as common, that means 2.5% to 3% of voters voted null on purpose. IN Mexico City null votes reached something over 11%

Counting the votes for the Chamber of Deputies, the PRI is in first place, displacing the PAN to second palce, while the PRD lost voter share too and dropped to third place. The Green Party did better than expected, garnering nearly 7% of the vote for fourth place (it's also allied to the PRI).

What does this mean? Possibly very little. The PRI will be the dominant force, but still has no majority. Besides the PRI has shown little inclination to further liberalize either the economy or politics or even to seriously reform the tax code (as opposed to simply raising taxes). The PRD will probably split, which is all to the good, but it's too early to say how that will affect anything.

Finally I abstained from voting. Why? Well, because my assigned polling palce was about ten miles away, past two toll highways and at leat a half mile of unpaved road. I dind't care to vote so badly as to take that much time, pay two tolls twice and risk damage to my car. There has to be a mistake somewhere, because our neighbors were assigned places much closer to vote.

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