Socialist Action /July 2000
Election Upset in Mexico
By Gerry Foley
The defeat in the July 2 general elections of
the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the quasi-state party that
has ruled Mexico for 70 years, is an indication of the radicalization going
on in the country, even if the victorious National Action Party (PAN) is
no different politically and in fact represents a more right-wing tradition
and ideology.
Under pressure from rising mass discontent, the
Mexican capitalist class and its imperialist backers were anxious to carry
through a political facelift. The victory of the PAN was clearly what the
U.S. ruling circles wanted, since the one-party regime in general had become
seriously discredited, and the ruling party was over its head in corruption.
The U.S. political manipulators had clearly been
pushing for years for the establishment of a more normal bourgeois regime
in Mexico, the sort of electoral shell game that prevails in the United
States.
The immediate effect of the PAN victory is a defeat
for the Mexican masses, since their justified hatred of the regime in place
was diverted into support for a party that was certainly no better and is
maybe even worse than the PRI.
This setback is a result of the fact that most
of the Mexican left parties abandoned socialist perspectives and focused
exclusively on the "democratic" question, that is, defeating the
ruling party. So, the natural conclusion of most of those dissatisfied with
the PRI regime was to vote for the PAN, the largest opposition party.
Nonetheless, even this superficial change in the
parliamentary regime in Mexico is not going to be easy to carry without
pain and without risks for the rulers.
For one thing, the election was not a vote of confidence
in a new regime. The total vote, for example, was 10 percent lower than
in the last election six years ago, when there was no doubt of the outcome.
The reporting of the Mexican presidential elections
in the serious U.S. capitalist press has reflected an obvious uneasiness
of American ruling circles about the political situation in a huge and potentially
unstable country with which United States is increasingly intertwined.
In its July 2 issue, The New York Times headlined
its story on the start of the voting in Mexico, "Whoever Wins, Vote
in Mexico Will Be Fateful." That is, there will be a political crisis,
even if the two capitalist parties, as expected, try to make some bipartisan
arrangement in the aftermath of the election to maintain political stability.
In the three-way race, the pre-election polls had
showed a large majority of Mexicans against continued rule by the PRI. Given
the discredit of the de facto one-party system and the party presiding over
it, the PRI remaining in power yet again after this election could have
led to serious disillusionment with the bourgeois electoral system itself.
On the eve of the vote, the PAN candidate, Vicente
Fox, was apparently running neck and neck with the PRI standard-bearer.
As it turned out, he appears to have defeated the former ruling party candidate
by a wide margin, indicating that the discredit of the regime was substantially
greater than it had even appeared.
On the other hand, after maintaining itself in
power for 70 years through a massive patronage system, the PRI's loss of
power will threaten the livelihoods and prospects of a large number of aggressive
and potentially violent parasites.
In fact, the last Mexican elections were marked
by the assassination of the first PRI candidate, apparently as a result
of a struggle among rival gangs in the party.
After that event, Jaime Gonzalez wrote in the June
15 issue of El Umbral-El Socialista, the newspaper of our cothinkers in
the Socialist Coalition of Mexico, that the then PAN candidate "effectively
withdrew from the race," recognizing the violence that entrenched interests
in the PRI could resort to.
The threat of violence also deflated the prospects
of the other main candidate in the 1994 elections, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas,
the probable real winner of the 1988 elections, although denied the presidency
then by electoral fraud.
The population had good reason to doubt that his
electoralist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) could mobilize effectively
to defend an election victory against the entrenched power of the PRI and
its capitalist backers.
Cardenas a distant also-ran
In this election campaign, the polls showed Cardenas
trailing far behind the PAN and the PRI, with no chance of winning. His
final result seems to have been about what the polls predicted, 16 percent.
In fact, Cardenas' PRD had been under pressure
to quit the race in order to permit "democratic alternation,"
that is, the defeat of the one-party system and the establishment of an
"opposition" government. The more opportunistic elements of the
PRD have been steadily deserting the party to join the PAN campaign.
This desertion to the PAN is the natural result
of the PRD's bourgeois electoral politics since it does not pose a working-class
alternative to the bourgeois parties, but merely "democratic"
opposition to a one-party regime.
Thus, the natural course for PRD politicians is
to join the strongest bourgeois electoral alternative to the PRI.
This development represents the final bankruptcy
of the Mexican left-so-called socialist parties, that dissolved themselves
into the PRD years ago in the hope of being catapulted into power on the
back of a "democratic" opposition to the one-party state.
Socialist Coalition makes gains
In this election campaign, the only socialist campaign
has been waged by the Socialist Coalition, formed by the Socialist Unity
League (LUS) and the Socialist Workers Party (POS). These are two small
parties without ballot status and with organizations in only a few places
across the country.
Nonetheless, despite the Socialist Coalition's
organizational weakness, its campaign has gotten a respectful hearing across
Mexico, not only from young people but even from major newspapers.
For example, in Jalisco, Manuel Aguilar, the Socialist
Coalition candidate, was interviewed on four radio stations in mid-May and
given time to explain the coalition's platform.
He was the only candidate there to defend the workers
at the local Euzkadi tire factory, who have been hit with arbitrary firings.
In mid-June, Aguilar campaigned in the poor, largely
Indian southern state of Oaxaca, where he reported that he got his best
results by that point. In Juchitan, on June 11, he spoke to a rally of up
to 300 people, along with POS speakers, who spoke in the Zapotec Indian
language.
Aguilar has spoken mainly to groups of workers
and students across the country in a myriad of meetings. The total numbers
have not been large, but this is an extremely important audience for Mexico's
future, and the Socialist Coalition reports that Aguilar has gotten a generally
favorable response.
While bourgeois politics in Mexico are more and
more caught in an impasse, the ground is clearly heating up under the feet
of the electoral politicians. Thus, the June 15 El Umbral-El Socialista
reports that even the bourgeois candidates have found it advisable to speak
in uncharacteristic "leftist" language.
Vicente Fox, the candidate of a party with a traditional
right-wing Catholic base, went so far as to try to identify himself with
the revolutionary student movement of 1968, which was drowned in blood by
the PRI government of the time. That is an eloquent testimony to the growing
radicalization in the country. It is also a disguise that Fox cannot maintain
very long once he is in office.
Socialist Action /July 2000 |