PRI's bittersweet return to los Pinos
2012-07-08
Posted by: badanov
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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Charges continue to be levelled in local as well as national Mexican press about widespread vote buying in the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) return to the presidency of Mexico in last week's national elections.
Partido de Revolucion Democratica (PRD) leader José de Jesus Zambrano Grijalva called Saturday to join forces with Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) leaders to press an investigation over allegations that millions of voters received gift cards, mostly in the form of Sorianna store cards. The issue will be hard coded campaign spending limits, which if true, PRI blew past.
Immediately following the initial vote count, Mexico's independent Institutio Federal Electoral (IFE) began an immediate audit Monday of roughly half the polling places. That audit quietly concluded Friday that the PRI's win is confirmed, even though the issue of vote buying by PRI seems to be gaining traction in the national press. IFE may well be forced to deal with the issue sooner rather than later.
As a matter of evaluating the strength of the win, PRI's Enrique Pena Nieto gained votes in convincing fashion with more than 18,727,398 votes versus his nearest rival PRD's Andres Manual Lopez Obrador with 15,535,117 votes, a margin of more than six percent. This contrasts with the 2006 presidential race in which Lopez Obrador was narrowly defeated by PAN's Felipe Calderon Hinojosa by less than one percent of the total vote.
Similarly in the six statehouses up for election, PRI won four of the six with PAN retaining only one, Guanajuato, and PRD retaining Chiapas. The remainder, Jalisco, Morelos, Tabasco and Yucatan all went PRI. The totality of the PRI's win in those four statehouses is exemplified by Jalisco state, which had previously been held by PAN. In that state, PRI won 16 of 20 seats in the Jalisco state Chamber of Deputies with PAN winning or retaining five and PRD-aligned Movimiento Cuidadano retaining only one.
What made the win in the Jalisco local deputies contest so stark was that even in races with wide margins of victories, opposition parties win at least a large plurality of seats. Not so in Jalisco, even with a relatively close four point margin of victory by PRI's Aristoteles Sandoval. Governor elect Sandoval will likely have a easy time in the coming three years dealing with a pliant and friendly legislature.
The taking of the four remaining statehouses by PRI is exemplary of the ground game PRI has had since 2010, when PRI won or flipped 11 of 14 statehouses under the auspices of Beatriz Parades Rangel. That political juggernaut continued in 2011 under Humberto Moreira with PRI winning five of seven statehouses, among them Mexico state, Guerrero, Coahuila and Michoacan. As matters stand now, PRI now retains control of 21 of 31 Mexican states. The year 2012 is a stunning one with with PRI holding tremendous political power at the local level.
Except for the national Chamber of Deputies.
Even with a convincing win over his nearest rival by almost 3 million votes, in perhaps the most under reported Mexican political story since 2010, PRI failed to gain a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. In 2006 going from 123 seats of 500 versus their victorious rivals in PAN with 206, PRI has along with ally Partido Verde Ecologista Mexicano (PVEM) or Greens Party managed to gain a total of 232 seats. PAN has lost ground with 118, while PRI's rival PRD fell to 142 seats from 156 in 2006.
PRI's problem now is to attempt to paper over widespread charges of election fraud while trying to advance their legislative agenda in the face of two major parties currently in no mood to horsetrade. The current political set up will make life very difficult for Pena Nieto even if PRI is willing to compromise to advance their legislative agenda.
In Mexico the presidency is a powerful position, one in which the party in power can advance some elements of their own agenda without legislative oversight, especially in the area of security, where Pena Nieto is commander in chief of all Mexican security forces, and in the area of Mexican federalism.
Pena Nieto has inherited 21 PRI political entities, most of them with a tremendous public debt load acquired over the last two years. Coahuila is but one extreme example with the largest per capita public debt load of any state in Mexico, with at least some of that borrowed money illegally transferred into foreign private banks. The amount of debt contracted by Coahuila state is so large that the entire payroll tax collection of the state has been pledged as collateral in exchange for servicing that debt.
Coahuila state is an extreme example but not the only one by far. Pena Nieto's Mexico state and Veracruz are two more states with political leadership which has acquired public debt at a staggering pace. Like all public debt that money will be repaid and a political price will be paid to do it.
However, not content with losing control of several states which have large public debt load, PRI governor's are likely to appeal to Pena Nieto in the early going to relieve their federal requirements, especially if debt coupons rise. This is one area in which Pena Nieto will be forced to make hard choices. Support PRI governors in 21 entities by easing federal requirements as to tax collections and how locally levied moneys get spent, or attempt to appeal to a hostile legislature to bail out that states.
If the Chamber of Deputies do decide to bail out the states, those moneys are likely to come with strings attached, the result of which could be a severe decline in the political fortunes of the PRI in the short term. Even with midterm elections still three years away, under the conditions local governors have created, that time could well be a nightmare for Pena Nieto.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Dug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
© Copyright 2012 by Chris Covert. You must obtain permission to reprint this article.