SinEmbargo: Fernando Dworak*
Translated by: Joel Cloke
Around 20 years ago I went to a conference by Carlos Castillo Peraza. There he said, give or take a word or two, something that made me think about politics’ job: the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) only had the past to offer. In effect, it’s necessary that all the parties inspire the voter by means of an idea presenting a shared path and destination for the whole country.
Nowadays that seems to be lacking in almost all the parties. Today the Party of the Institutional Revolution doesn’t have the archaic speeches that legitimized them, such as revolutionary nationalism and Mexicaness, because Morena [Movement for National Regeneration] took them away from them. The National Action Party (PAN) wasted 12 years of government without changing mindsets and together with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) they seem desperate to not lose any political space based on alliances and scavenging old PRI members [to compete in the twelve gubernatorial elections in June of this year].
Whether we like it or not, the only party that presents a vision about community and destiny, as anachronistic as it is, is Morena [led by Andrés Manuel López Obredor]. The rest of the parties seem more worried about avoiding 2016 instead of developing a competitive platform and an agenda for concise changes. Neither PAN nor the PRD has competitive candidates beyond their bases.
At this rate the 2018 presidential election will be decided between the votes that will punish the PRI and the fear vote against Morena. An independent competitor? Let’s first see whether or not “The Unbridled One” [independent Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, governor of Nuevo Leon] ends up becoming a horse in the race over the course of this year, to see if the figure of an independent candidate doesn’t run out of steam too early.
A sign of crisis from the parties is that for the five governorships for which PAN and PRD agreed they would make an alliance, four candidates come from PRI: José Rosas Aispuro (Durango), Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares (Veracruz), Pedro de León Mojarro (Zacatecas) and Pedro Joaquín (Quintana Roo). Furthermore, in the first two, the candidate from 2010 is being recycled, as if in six years they couldn’t come up with a competitive list of candidates from their own teams. In another case, Chihuahua, Javier Corral is running again, who didn’t have a history of success in his first candidacy.
It’s time to stop blaming PRI for raising votes with gifts of goods, like in the nineties. In the end, every party does that. Let’s start questioning the opposing parties’ operational inefficiencies, that, even with questionable governors, as in Veracruz [Javier Duarte], aren’t capable of positioning competitive candidates with platforms that can entice voters.
As it’s been said in this space, it's necessary to begin with electoral laws and regulations. With their restrictive and authoritarian vision, a set of rules has been brought about where the parties protect themselves instead of competing and winning by showing leadership, a platform and vision.
The funding systems for parties urgently needs to be reviewed, as it only makes them search for ways of maintaining funding from the federal Treasury. It’s imperative that the model of political communication be reviewed so that we citizens can know what the candidates don’t want us to know. Let’s lower the requirements to form a party, meanwhile making it more difficult for them to maintain their registration [currently parties need to win 3% of votes cast in a federal election to maintain their status to compete and receive federal funding]. Let’s make ourselves depend on the voters instead of maintaining elites entrenched in their leadership, whose logic is self-preservation. Spanish original
*Fernando Dworak holds a bachelors degree in Political Science from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) and a masters in Legislative Studies from the University of Hull, UK. He is coordinator and co-author of 'El legislador a examen: el debate sobre la reelección legislativa en México' (The Legislature Under Examination: The Debate Over Legislative Re-election in Mexico (FCE, 2003) and co-author with Xiuh Tenorio, of 'Modernidad Vs. Retraso: Rezago de una Asamblea Legislativa en una ciudad de vanguardia' (Modernity vs. Delay: Backwardness in a Legislative Assembly in a Vanguard City [Mexico City] (Polithink). He has taught at several national universitites. Since 2009 he has been academic coordinator of the Diploma in Legislative Planning and Operation at ITAM. @FernandoDworak