Money, the machine and the man

Mexico

Jul 7th 2005 ATLACOMULCO
From The Economist print edition

A key state election shows how Mexico's formerly ruling party could seize back the presidency next year

SAY something often enough, and it may come true. So it was in this week's election for governor of the state of Mexico. Posters proclaiming Enrique Peña Nieto “Your governor 2005-2011” blanketed the state and Mexico City, which it surrounds on three sides. Mr Peña, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seven decades until its defeat by Vicente Fox in 2000, duly won the election on July 3rd with almost half the vote.

The election in the state of Mexico, with a population of 15m, is not only the largest sub-national contest but the last important state vote before the presidential election in July 2006. So it was closely watched for pointers to Mexico's political future.

In the event, it delivered two clear lessons—and several uncertainties. First, support for Mr Fox's conservative National Action Party (PAN) is plunging. In a state which he might once have hoped to win, the PAN's Rubén Mendoza gained only 26% of the vote, barely ahead of Yeidckol Polevnsky of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). In Nayarit, a small western state whose governorship was narrowly won by the PRI on the same day, the PAN took just 6% of the vote. All this suggests that the presidency lies between the PRI and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the PRD mayor of Mexico City.

The second lesson is that the PRI's spending power and machine—both stronger than those of the PRD—can bring victory. As well as his posters, Mr Peña spent at least $14m on television and radio advertisements. The money backed a persuasive candidate. Aged only 38, with the charm of a young Bill Clinton, Mr Peña has a popular touch. At a campaign rally in Atlacomulco, his hometown, he waded to the podium through an adoring crowd of women, who cheered his promises of hospitals and highways. A despairing Mr Mendoza responded with the slogan, “I'm ugly, but I know how to govern.”

The campaign's central issue became whether the PRI's spending broke a legal limit of $20m—and if it did, whether the electoral authority will do anything about this. PRI officials dismissed the criticisms as an attempt by losers to disqualify a winner. The PAN had accused the PRI of spending more than $40m, but conceded defeat. Not so Ms Polevnsky: she called the result illegitimate and called for a re-run.

Such arguments are reminiscent of the bad old days of one-party rule. Mexicans had hoped that the establishment in 1996 of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), an independent body, and its equivalents in the states, had put the integrity of elections beyond dispute. Yet in the state of Mexico, the local electoral commission was rocked by scandal in May. All its members resigned when they were found to have taken bribes on a contract to print the ballot slips. José Núñez, the commission's new head, says that he has no way of knowing how much the PRI spent, partly because of deep discounts offered by Mexico's two main television companies. He says it will take two years to complete an investigation into campaign spending; he admits that while the commission could in theory ban an offending party from the next election, in practice this has never happened. Even Mr Peña concedes that the system is flawed. “Campaigns should be shorter and cheaper,” he says.

The PRI was helped in the state of Mexico by a record low turnout (42%), making the power of its get-out-the-vote machine decisive. Turnout in the presidential election is likely to be higher. The PRI faces other disadvantages in relation to Mr López Obrador, long the front-runner in the polls. While he is unopposed within his party, the PRI has not quite anointed its candidate; it may hold a primary later this year. The chosen one is likely to be Roberto Madrazo, the PRI's president. But he faces a challenge from Arturo Montiel, who as the outgoing governor of the state of Mexico will get a temporary boost from Mr Peña's triumph. The state election suggested that Mr López Obrador had no coat-tails. But according to Daniel Lund of Mund Americas, a pollster, polls showed that many of those who did not vote for Ms Polevnsky will vote for Mr López Obrador.

The most worrying signal from the state of Mexico is the new fragility of the electoral authorities. The IFE played a crucial role in 2000 in assuring Mexico's first-ever free and fair presidential election. But the IFE's new board is less respected and more partisan than its predecessor. Whatever the eventual outcome of next year's election, the state of Mexico may have provided a pointer to the following one. However much he spent, Mr Peña looks like a politician with a future.

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