A strange defeat
THREE dominant characteristics emerge from the Mexican elections
THE stunning defeat of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) candidate in the Mexican presidential elections of July 2, of July 2:
1) the electoral victory of the modern conservatives headed by president-elect Vicente Fox.
2) the overwhelming defeat of the PRI and the dissolution of the close bond between this party and the State, in other words the disintegration of the party-state regime
3) the defeat of the Cardenista opposition and the PRD as an alternative to the PRI regime and, from the declarations of Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas on the evening of July 2, its constitution as a democratic opposition from the left to Fox's modern conservative government
ADOLFO GILLY
10 return to each of these points: The
PRI regime was not defeated by the democratic left, as was the case in
1997 in Mexico City, but by the modern conservatives, distant heirs of their 19th century ancestors. It would be superficial to reduce the importance of the historical dimensions of this fact: for the first time in living memory Mexico will have a president who specifically denies the tradition of Benito Juárez.
The underlying factors in Fox's victory are, in my opinion, not located in market research and opportunist alliances. They reside rather in the displacement towards hard-line conservatism and the political right of a significant sector of Mexican society, that today amounts to much more than the traditional 20 percent who have always voted for the conservative PAN party.
The Salinista reforms have led to socio-economic and to some degree cultural changes. The young people who voted for Fox did not consist only of the gilded youth but also others for whom the
Mexican Revolution and the rituals of the
PRI state which emerged from that revolution (together with the lies which accompany them) mean nothing.
Lies
Fox's lies are of another type and so far the voters have not stopped to think about them, because they only thought about removing the PRI. The emptiness of Fox's speech on the night of July 2 was not because he has nothing to say, but rather
2 International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000 because he does not wish to enter into conflict with any part of his heterogeneous electorate.
It is obvious that the new conservative president of Mexico - in the style of Thatcher, Reagan, or Menem — will not be able to fulfil his contradictory and incongruous promises on jobs, wages, education, privatization, tax cuts, Chiapas, annual 7% increase in GDP and all the rest. But once in power, he will be the Commander-in-Chief of the army. I am not suggesting a dictatorship, but his program will demand a certain use of force.
### Reforms
Vicente Fox seeks to complete the program of Salinista reforms, following financial and commercial deregulation and the big privatizations; an education system dictated by the demands of the market, the final dismantling of social protection, regressive taxes, the reform of the Federal Labor Law to make employment relations more flexible, the elimination of rights and guarantees at work and the final destruction of collective contracts (and, by extension, the corporate trade unions of the PRI).
It is possible that Fox will discover that six years are not sufficient for this project and will wish to promote constitutional reforms to allow his re-election The golden rule of his government will be the opening up to private capital of everything which is the common heritage of the nation, taking to the limit the Salinista spirit: cultural goods, oil, communal lands,
2000 has brought seven decades of one party rule to an end in the country. We print here a commentary by the veteran Mexican journalist and historian Adolfo Gilly who is a member of the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD). The article first appeared in the newspaper La Jornada of
July 4, 2000. * forest reserves.
If nobody stops him and his friends, we will have an atomized country of golf clubs and some very rich people driving this year's model. The framework for such a country has already been erected by Salinas, who was the big winner in this election even though he was not a candidate.
Those who will pay the price will be the poor and the peasants. As Fox has quickly stated, his macroeconomic policy will be the same as that of Ernesto Zedillo and Carlos Salinas. He has promised to include some prominent advocates of that policy in his economic cabinet. In this area, there will be no change, but rather a firm continuity.
### Dismantling
Vicente Fox will have in some cases to dismantle and in others reshape to his service the subordination of the mass media: the press, television, radio, this empire that the PRI have always maintained under their control. Much more work will be necessary with the PRI's regional fiefdoms; here he will have to negotiate and incorporate them in his "plural government"
Nevertheless, the great new development is that these clientalist regional, agrarian, economic fiefdoms of the corporate state have lost their matrix and point of unity: the federal government, the state and the relation of unity with their party, the PRI. It is too soon to know how it will recycle its political apparatus and its crew of politicians, operators and raccoons. But
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* Mexico