PRI posts electoral gains in Mexico

Adam Thomson

Financial Times, October 7 2008

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico’s third political force, notched up an important local-election result on Sunday in a sign that the party is on its way to performing strongly in next year’s vital mid-term congressional elections.

By Monday afternoon, and with almost all the votes counted from Sunday’s poll in the southern state of Guerrero, the PRI had won 13 of the 28 directly elected seats in the state legislature from nine three years ago. It also won 40 of Sunday’s 81 mayoral elections.

By contrast, the leftwing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) won only 13 seats against the 18 that it had won in 2005. Furthermore, it won just 24 of the municipal elections, losing the bulk of the state’s most important cities. The centre-right National Action Party (PAN), to which President Felipe Caldero(acute on o)n belongs, came in a distant but expected third.

The result will come as a huge boost to the PRI, which will doubtless try to build on the result as it eyes next summer’s mid-term elections to renew the lower house of Mexico’s national Congress.

According to an opinion poll published in the Universal newspaper on Monday, 44 per cent of Mexicans intend to vote for the PRI next year compared with 34 per cent for the PAN and 19 per cent for the PRD. Two months ago, the same opinion poll showed the PRI and the PAN in a technical tie.

The PRI’s come-back is surprising given that many voters continue to associate the party that ruled Mexico for seven uninterrupted decades until 2000 with corruption, vote-buying and old-school clientelist politics.

But Jorge Buendi(acute on i)a of Buendi(acute on i)a & Loredo, the company that carried out the poll, believes that the party has simply taken advantage of the poor performance of its rivals.

”In the last couple of years, the PRI has become a catch-all party for the increasing number of Mexicans who feel unsatisfied with the other two parties,” he told the FT on Monday.

Most of the PRI’s recent rise has come at the expense of the PRD. One reason, argues Mr Buendia, is that previously sympathetic voters have been scared away in recent months as they have witnessed the party’s apparent inability to resolve a debilitating internal power struggle.

A second reason is that Mexicans have become disenchanted with André’s Manuel López Obrador, who headed a series of defiant protests and street blockades following his narrow defeat in the 2006 presidential election.

”Andres Manuel has inadvertently been a great friend to the PRI,” Mr Buendia said.

But the PRI has also benefited from the increasingly difficult situation that Mexico faces and, in particular, of the government’s seeming inability to deal with them. Of particular concern are rising levels of violence and the deteriorating economic environment stemming from the problems in the US.

”Mexico has suffered several blows in the last few months, and voters are unhappy with the government’s response,” said Mr Buendia.