Tessie Borden
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Jul. 6, 2003 12:00 AM
MEXICO CITY - The Democratic Revolutionary Party may be Mexico's third political
option, but it is focused on a national presence and on winning the presidency
three years from now, according to party President Rosario Robles.
At a news conference last week with foreign correspondents, Robles responded
to criticism from Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, founding member of the party and its
choice for president in the 2000 elections.
Cardenas said the PRD, as it is known by its Spanish acronym, should have aimed
for more than 20 percent of the vote in elections being held today for the lower
house of Congress and several governors.Setting realistic goals"It's evident
that the PRD is a party that aims for the majority," Robles said. "It's
evident the PRD wants to win the presidency of the republic and to have the
national administration. For that we have to set viable goals that allow the
party to keep rising and reaching that final goal in 2006."
The last polls published before an eight-day poll blackout preceding the elections
gave the PRD 19 to 20 percent of the nationwide vote.
Robles said that what Cardenas had interpreted as the party's goals were simply
minimum percentages of votes that must be reached before the party can move
on its next goal: putting its candidate, likely Mexico City Mayor Andr?s Manuel
Lopez Obrador, into the Mexican White House.
"No political analyst and no party member would think that, in the condition
that the party is . . . the PRD could have a majority in the Chamber of Deputies,"
Robles said.
"That would be setting a frankly unreachable challenge for the party at
this time."
Cardenas, who just returned from a three-month stint teaching a course at the
University of Chicago, told Mexican media that the PRD should aim for a majority
in Congress. Robles said she does not disagree but added that goals should be
incremental.
Cardenas a three-time presidential candidate, has said he would like to be the
PRD's man in 2006, though he is not opposed to Lopez Obrador's candidacy "or
anyone else's." If Cardenas follows through with an intraparty campaign
for the candidacy, he could set up a showdown with Lopez Obrador. Lopez Obrador
is the most popular politician in Mexico, with approval ratings topping 80 percent,
thanks to a visible public works campaign and programs to help the elderly and
the poor.Gains in Congress likelyRegarding the rest of the party, Robles said
the PRD is the only one likely to gain significantly in today's congressional
races. Polls consistently show the party, which has 54 seats in the 500-member
body, could win 75 to 100 seats for the next three years.
But not only that, the quality of the candidates has risen as well, Robles said.
The party made an extra effort for the candidates on its slate to be men and
women of "the first level" who have experience in other areas of government
and more education than candidates of the past.
This is something that is happening across politics in Mexico, especially at
the gubernatorial level, where six posts will be decided today, said George
Grayson, a political analyst at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
"In contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, many more of the gubernatorial aspirants
have served as mayors, as state legislators, or in state bureaucracies,"
Grayson wrote. "Now that governorships are no longer sinecures, knowledge
of and success with local issues assumes more salience."Appointed governorsAt
the peak of its power during the 71 years it dominated Mexican politics, the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, from which the PRD split in 1989,
did not elect governors. The president appointed them.
The PRD has been criticized for concentrating its supporters in only a few places,
among them the Federal District where Mexico City is, the contiguous state of
Mexico, and the states of Michoacan and Guerrero.
In Sonora and Nuevo Leon, the two northern-border states holding elections today,
the PRD candidates register in the single digits in the polls.
According to Grayson's analysis, in Nuevo Leon, candidate Roberto Benavides
Gonz?lez registered behind the "undecided" vote. And in Sonora, where
the PRD made an alliance with two minor parties, the coalition's numbers went
down from 5.6 percent in January to 3.2 percent in May.
Robles countered those numbers with those the party garners in its strongholds.
"I can tell you that in the Federal District we will have more than 45
percent of the vote," she said. "In very important states, we have
great presence."
She said that, with an election in which the lower house of Congress will be
divided among three parties, the party doesn't need a majority in all states.
"We have national positioning," Robles said. "We have leadership
that represents a constituency much larger than just our party, and we believe
that with that combination, we can fight a good fight."
Reach the reporter at tessie.borden@arizonarepublic.com.