Pubdate: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2012 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Oakland Ross MEXICO'S POLITICS: BACK TO THE FUTURE? MEXICO CITY -- In some countries, a man can't get a shoeshine without seeming to make a political statement. Mexico, it seems, is such a country -- and, on this occasion at least, Ricardo Barroso Agramont is such a man. Wearing a navy-blue business suit and a scarlet tie, Barroso is lounging at a small, red shoeshine kiosk, while a bootblack attends to the buffing of his footwear. The mid-morning traffic lurches past along Avenida Insurgentes Norte, among the main thoroughfares in Mexico City, and political activists stream back and forth on foot through the tall metal gates that lead to the huge nine-storey headquarters of the once invincible Institutional Revolutionary Party, the authoritarian political behemoth that dominated this land for seven long decades, until swept from power in watershed elections 12 years ago. Now the PRI is back -- or so it seems. With little more than three months before elections on July 1, the party is the odds-on favourite to recover the Mexican presidency, while possibly taking control of one or both houses of Congress as well. Depending on whom you believe, this is either good news -- or not. Barroso, who is running for a senate seat representing the PRI in the state of Baja California Sur, is predictably among the optimists. "The PRI is a renovated party," he insists in a hastily improvised interview. "It's a party strengthened by experience. It has learned from its mistakes." That is one view. There are others. Ask Jose Gil Olmos, a reporter at the weekly newsmagazine Proceso, and he will tell you the party that ran Mexico as a sort of corporate dictatorship from the late 1920s till 2000 has merely undergone the political equivalent of Barroso's shoeshine -- a purely cosmetic operation. Beneath the surface, he says, the party is run by the same old gang of power-brokers -- a clique of former presidents, former state governors and backroom strategists, many of them members of the so-called Grupo Atlacomulco, a shadowy network of party bosses from the populous and politically dominant region adjoining the capital. "Twelve years out of power hasn't changed them at all," says Gil Olmos. "There is no change, either of people or of plans. The old men are the ones in charge, the oldest and most astute, the dinosaurs of the party." Greetings from Mexico, where nothing ever happens until it happens, as former dictator Porfirio Diaz famously observed more than a century ago. What seems to be happening in Mexico is the imminent and surprising return to power of a party that was long synonymous with this country's authoritarian and graft-ridden past. Many say it still is. The campaign formally begins on March 30, but it has in fact been underway for weeks and the PRI's candidate for the presidency, Enrique Pena Nieto, 45, is polling ahead of his main opponents. Young, vigorous and telegenic, if somewhat prone to verbal bumbling, Pena Nieto is the father of three "legitimate" children -- plus two borne out of wedlock -- and has served since 2005 as the governor of Mexico state. Married to a former soap opera starlet, he might seem to be a thoroughly modern man. But that is not the way he is viewed by some observers. "Even if he is from a younger generation, he appeals to that old PRI culture," says Jean-FranA'ois Prud'homme, director of academic affairs at the Colegio de Mexico, an elite university. "He does not represent a rupture with the traditional PRI political culture." Maybe not. But millions of Mexicans -- those between 18 and 24 -- will be voting this year for the first time, and they likely do not have clear memories of the traditional PRI political culture. Many older Mexicans may well vote for the former ruling party out of habit. Or insecurity. The presidential race is unfolding against a backdrop of withering crime and violence, a factor that may well play to the PRI's strengths. "The PRI has people capable of talking with the heads of the drug cartels," says Gil Olmos. "They speak the same language. They're the same people. They have the same origins." Whatever else might be said about the PRI's long and sullied past -- seven decades of oppression, corruption and stubborn disparities between rich and poor -- at least there was mostly peace. Not any more. Beset by drug cartels, street gangs and shocking violence, many regions of Mexico are suffering what seems a lot like war, a conflict that has only worsened since late 2006, when current President Felipe Calderon, of the rightist National Action Party (PAN), threw the federal police, the armed forces, his own reputation and just about anything else that came to hand into an all-out and alarmingly bloody showdown with the drug trade. Since then, more than 50,000 Mexicans have lost their lives, substantial tracts of Mexican territory have reverted to a sort of feudal existence, almost the entire northern region along the U.S. border has become a no-go zone, the country's judicial system has fallen further into disrepute -- and the drug cartels are still doing an untidy but very profitable business. "When Calderon declared war on drug trafficking, he made people think in terms of winning and losing," says Prud'homme. "He hasn't won." Whichever candidate secures the presidency, he or she will inherit what seems to be a losing battle against drug lords, along with a raft of other problems, including widespread poverty, high unemployment and rampant lawlessness. The race pits three main contestants. In addition to the PRI's Pena Nieto, they are Josefina Vazquez Mota, who is seeking the presidency on behalf of PAN and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a left-leaning former mayor of Mexico City who lost a close and bitter race to Calderon six years ago. Lopez Obrador is running for the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution. Already, the country is awash with public opinion polls, a flood of pseudo-information that one newspaper columnist recently likened to a disease. "Encuestitis," he called it, a play on encuesta, Spanish for "poll." For the most part, the surveys seem to say whatever those paying for them want them to say. But many believe Pena Nieto enjoys an early lead, in part because of his youthful good looks, in part because of the PRI's vaunted organizational abilities, and in part because he does not represent the party that holds power. Vazquez Mota does. Widely regarded as a competent administrator, the former education minister is also the first woman to seek the Mexican presidency on the ticket of a major party. In other circumstances, she would seem well poised to attract much of the female vote that might otherwise favour Pena Nieto. But there's one problem. As the candidate of a conservative party traditionally aligned with the Catholic Church, Vazquez Mota, a 51-year-old mother of three, is constrained from adopting progressive positions on issues most important to women -- abortion, contraception and divorce, among others. She also faces the curse of incumbency: she represents a party that has held the keys to the presidential palace for the past 12 years, a difficult time for most Mexicans. "She'll face a punishment vote more than a gender vote," says Carlos Adolfo Gutierrez Vidal, director of the communications school at the University of the Cloister of Sister Juana. As for Lopez Obrador, now 58, he may have poisoned his electoral fortunes in 2006, when he refused to accept the tortilla-thin margin of his loss to Calderon after having been the front-runner for much of that year's presidential campaign. Instead Lopez Obrador sent his supporters into the streets by the thousands, creating massive traffic congestion in a city already choking from an excess of cars. "People still remember that," says Gil Olmos. "That was when many people stopped seeing him as a statesman." One way or another, the former mayor's once vaunted popularity seems to have waned, even as his leftist-flavoured rhetoric has moderated. But the campaign has not yet even begun, at least not formally, and much could change between now and July 1. The PRI's early lead, and its hopes of once again dominating Mexico as it did in decades past, are far from assured. Still, old habits die hard. Just ask Rosa Maria Enciso, 57, who walks with a cane and works as a custodian at the monument to Mexican independence, better known as the Angel, a winged, gold-plated statue that soars above Mexico City's main boulevard, the Paseo de la Reforma. "Those who run for president always promise a lot, but they don't deliver," says Enciso. "Those of us down below, we stay the same." And yet, come July 1, Enciso will be casting her ballot for the populist and authoritarian party once known as "la dictadura perfecta" -- the perfect dictatorship. Mark her down as another vote for the PRI. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom