MEXICO
OWEVER, this year the fraud took new forms. Up until now, it has consisted mainly of stuffing ballot boxes with votes for the official candidates. This time, it was mainly effected by removing ballots for the other candidates, especially the PRI "dissident" and leader of the National Democratic Front (FDN), Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. 31.12% of the vote. The PRI's official candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, is supposed to have won by a razor-thin majority of 50.35%. Thus, even with the fraud, he ended up far from the comforting predictions that gave him more than 60% of the
Likewise, the rate of participation, which on the evening of July 6 was supposed to be one of the highest in the history of the country, nearly 80%, fell to about 51% when the results were announced. On election night, the minister of the interior and the president of the elections commission (the grand master of the fraud), Manuel Bartlett, hailed the "exceptional civic spirit of Mexicans" on the evening of the elections, at the same time as he announced the "smashing victory" of Salinas de Gortari. Subsequently he has preferred to enthuse over this "demonstration of pluralism unprecedented [sic!] in the history of
"Salinas cannot win, but the PRI cannot lose." This pithy sentence by an PRI official says a lot. But despite the efforts of the experts in election-rigging, these results were a terrible rebuff for the policy followed by the ruling party, as well as for its methods of domination, which are based on patronage and corruption.
Compared to the 70%, 80% or even 98% scored by his predecessors, Salinas' 50.35% make him look falsely elected, and he will have a lot difficulty living that down.
Cárdenas playing with dynamite
If the official results are examined in greater detail, the PRI lost the presidential elections in four of the country's 32 states, including the Federal District. Mexico City is located here and it includes 20 million people and more than a quarter of the voters. For the first time, the opposition got into the Senate (the most important of the two chambers), with the election of four representatives of the FDN.
With regard to deputies, the results are more complicated, given the mode of election for this House — 60% of deputies are elected directly, 40% on a proportional basis. The PRI elected 249 deputies by "direct" vote, as against 31 for the National Action Party (PAN, the right-wing bourgeois party) and 20 for the FDN. But according to the estimates (the official results 28 of the proportional vote has not yet been announced) the PRI should have a total of International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988
Elections
destabilize
regime
MORE THAN 300,000 people marched on
Saturday, July 16, through the streets of Mexico City to protest against fraud in the
July 6 elections. The vote was for the president of the republic, as well as for all senators and deputies.
As usual, the official results of the election were announced only 10 days after the vote. That left the local and national representatives of the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI), which has held undivided power for 60 years, plenty of time to adjust the outcome to suit their needs.
### ARIANE MERRI slightly more than 250 deputies, the rest being divided between the two big opposition parties. However, in order to make the constitutional reforms to which Salinas is committed, he needs two thirds of the House, which he will now only be able to get by negotiating with one or the other of the two parliamentary opposition parties.
By voting for Cárdenas, the daily La Jornada wrote, Mexicans "wanted to express their rejection of a policy that has aggravated social inequalities. They censured corruption and arbitrariness."
Will Cuauhtémoc be able to "take advantage" of the formidable movement that crystalized around his name in an often spontaneous way? That appears doubtful. Cárdenas wants to be seen as a statesman, and he knows that he is playing with dynamite. The army voted massively for him, and when the minister of defence, General Juan Arevala, announced the day after the elections that the military would support the victor, whoever he was, it was not for Moreover, after announcing his victory over the PRI candidate, Cárdenas finally accepted the official result of the elections, declaring that it was necessary to pursue the struggle against the fraud in the strictly legal channels, in other words not by pressure in the streets. As the Madrid daily El Pais noted, "the son of the socialist general [Lázaro Cárdenas] now holds a part of the responsibility for the future stability of a country that shares a 3,000 kilometer frontier with the United States, and which is considered one of the potential major centers of conflict in the world."
PRT also suffered from
• electoral fraud
The Fourth Internationalists of the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT) also suffered the consequences of this fraud. When it turned out that Cárdenas had to be "granted" more votes than expected, the PRI had to take them away from somewhere else. The PRT was credited with 0.42% of the vote, or 80,000 votes, as against its official vote of 1.7% and 300,000 votes in 1985. If you count all those who came to the rallies and meetings organized by the PRT, the of ficial results mean that less than half those attending voted for them. Since the official PRT vote is less than 1.5% it has lost representation in parliament and its legal
A few days before the vote, 50,000 people attended the rally concluding the PRT's campaign. As soon as the fraudulent official results were proclaimed, the PRT took up the fight, meeting with the two other opposition candidates and calling for demonstrations against the government's abuses.
Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, the PRT's presidential candidate, held a press conference on July 9 together with Cuauhtémoc, in which she said: "Our presence in this press conference reflects our profound democratic conviction that only truth is revolutionary. For two days, we have been pointing out that according to the data in our computer center, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was winning the elections. This view has been confirmed with the passage of time. We consider Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas the president of our country.
"We take this position despite our ideological differences - in fact, because of our ideology, since we are firmly convinced that the only way to achieve socialism is through a clear commitment to democracy. And today in Mexico the fight for democracy involves precisely defending the sovereignty of the voters. We think that those Mexicans who voted for Cárdenas did so in the firm conviction that it was necessary to defeat the PRI. We share this view entirely, although we do not agree with the governmental alternative represented by Cárdenas. We say explicitly that if Cárdenas were president, we would be part of the intransigent opposition to him, outspokenly supporting a socialist alternative." *