The key result remains uncertain. While Felipe Calderón and his conservative National Action Party (PAN) celebrate their apparent-but-contested half-percent presidential victory, and the apparently defeated Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) take their claims of electoral fraud and irregularities to the Federal Electoral Tribunal (TRIFE) and to the streets, last Sunday?s elections have already yielded a number of interesting results.
DEMISE OF THE PRI
First, the vote count marks the beginning of the end for the once-mighty Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The PRI did not carry a single state in the presidential contest, and only four of 32 in the vote for congressional representatives. This may have been to the liking of dissident PRIistas like Elba Esther Gordillo, who is now calling for a rebuilding of the party under her guidance, but it is likely to accelerate the departure of party militants who don?t want to play for a losing team ? especially a losing team that stands for nothing except the accumulation of the privilege and power that is now slipping from its grasp.
These departures, in turn, may accelerate the formation of a standard, Western, two-party system, in which a constrained left-right (PRD-PAN) debate can be presented to the voting public, and in which those activists and functionaries dedicated only to political power, can take their chances with either party.
Second, along with the decline of the PRI, Election Day produced a dramatic doubling of the PRD presence in both houses of Congress (contingent, of course, on what the party owes its coalition partners). Whereas the PRD had previously lacked the numbers to form an effective legislative coalition with another party, they now have the power to do so. Under López Obrador, that is, they have now become major legislative players.
PRD DIVISIONS
Third, the PRD remains a divided center-left party, and the militant demand of AMLO to ?count every vote? may be driven by intra-party politics. AMLO and the center-left ex-PRIistas he has brought into the party (Manuel Camacho, Leonel Cota and Marcelo Ebrard among the most prominent) must plausibly ?defend the vote? in order to maintain their credibility within the party, and within the broader social left. That credibility will strengthen the party?s standing among the poor, the urban working class and the ideological left, at the same time that it may alienate members of a middle class fearful of the rise (return?) of the politics of the plazas and the streets.
Fourth, the campaign has demonstrated, yet again, the effectiveness of clever negative campaigning. The PAN mounted a carefully designed, innuendo-filled, negative campaign, in which they successfully demonized AMLO among the already fearful middle class.
This has not only intensified the political polarization of the country, but everyday class conflict as well, with many middle-class voters telling pollsters and journalists they voted for the PAN out of fear that the ?dangerous? AMLO would destroy the Mexican economy, and many poor and working- class voters telling those same journalists that the PAN was so dishonest and determined to prevent AMLO from attaining the presidency, they ?must have won by fraud? to protect their wealth.
LEGAL BUT ILLEGITIMATE
In this context, Calderón?s victory may prove to have been perfectly legal, but still perceived as illegitimate among large sectors of the population. There may have been no overt fraud in the organization and counting of the vote, but there were many ? to use the language of IFE ? irregularities in the campaign itself, including the fear-inducing (and countervailing anger- inducing) demonization of the PRD candidate, going back to the PAN?s attempt to keep AMLO off the ballot via the famous ?desafuero.?
Fifth, no matter what the final result, the winning candidate will have to govern a country in which over 60 percent of the electorate voted against him. Given the negativity of the campaign, much of that opposition will be intense. Calderón seems to recognize this and has indirectly offered AMLO a place in his Cabinet!!
While AMLO is more likely to spend the next few years shoring up his left, not his right flank, a Calderón Cabinet will certainly include a few putative leftists, much like the original Fox Cabinet contained some progressive, ?useful vote? partisans like Jorge Castañeda and Adolfo Aguilar Zinzer ? inclusions that may well have been consequential in determining Mexico?s Security Council vote against the U.S. war in Iraq.
Sixth, the PAN has proved to be the party with the most reliable ?hard vote.? Even in the headiest days of PRI rule, the conservative PAN ? born of an alliance between the Catholic Church and big business ? has had the sympathy and support of about one-third of the Mexican public. That support remains the same.
These are some of the certainties within the uncertainty.
frosen@cablevision.net.mx
