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By Neville Spencer

On July 2, Vicente Fox Quesada of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) was elected president of Mexico putting an end to 71 years of continuous rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Though the rule of the PRI had been under threat since the elections of 1988, it came as a surprise that it was a challenge from the right rather than the left which finally ended the PRI dynasty, leaving progressive movements and activists wondering whether to celebrate or bemoan the result.

The PRI's remarkable reign, winning successive elections over seven decades, was built on a combination of progressive reforms, corruption and clientelism, and a certain dose of repression. Its most progressive phase was during the government of Lazaro Cardenas during the '30s when significant land reforms were carried out and foreign oil companies nationalised The PRI has commanded a certain degree of residual loyalty among peasants and workers from its more progressive days.

But, through its control over the state and state resources, the PRI also created a huge network of clientelism and corruption to maintain its popular support and isolate any opposition. At the base level, local party leaders would give out food, clothing or money in exchange for votes and allocate state resources to local projects where support needed to be won or loyalty maintained. At higher levels, multi-million dollar corruption involving politicians, the wealthy elite and the drug cartels could be conducted with almost complete impunity, ensuring that backing the PRI was a profitable enterprise.

An important part of the PRI's power was, and to a diminishing extent still is, the unions. The PRI has had almost complete domination of the union movement. Some PRI union leaders do enjoy the support of their members, but many unions have simply been set up with little or no involvement from their members and are given official recognition, though their activity often consists simply of union leaders selling protection contracts to companies in exchange for keeping their members from taking any industrial action.

Where this system was insufficient to win support, imprisonment, torture and assassination of the PRI's opponents was allowed with impunity and electoral fraud at all levels of government and within unions was efficiently organised.

Challenge to the PRI

The first serious challenge to the PRI came in the 1988 elections. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was formed when the left of the PRI split away, led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas (son of former president Lazaro Cardenas), also absorbing most of Mexico's small left-wing parties. The PRD was probably the victor in the 1988 presidential elections but fraud kept the PRI in power.

Until the period in the lead up to last year's election, the PRD was the main opposition party in spite of not quite maintaining the level of support it had in 1988. But polls in the election period increasingly put Fox of the PAN ahead of the PRD and even showed he had a decent chance of defeating the PRI.

Since the PRI had been in power as long as most Mexicans could even remember, and that it represented such a seemingly immovable obstacle to democracy or progressive change, there was a certain constituency created who, even though they might be more sympathetic to the PRD, would be glad to get rid of the PRI even by voting for the right.

There is certainly merit to the idea that almost any way of separating the PRI from its control over state resources will make it more difficult for it to perpetuate itself through corruption and clientelism and throw open Mexico's political system at least a little.

This idea had even led to the serious contemplation of a left-right electoral alliance between the PRD and PAN though this alliance foundered before it had started. Former PRD president Porfirio Munoz Ledo who split from the PRD to form his own party in 1999 still threw his support behind Fox's campaign. He compared his stance to the Chileans who, he said, “united to get rid of Pinochet ... we're doing the same with PRInochet”.

The PAN

The PAN is traditionally the party of the conservative Catholic church hierarchy and has mostly collaborated with the PRI over the last two decades in implementing its neoliberal agenda of austerity and privatisation of public assets. It is firmly pro-business, as well as adhering to the conservative social policies of the Catholic church such as its anti-abortion and anti-gay positions.

Realising that the polls showed him as the candidate with the best chance of defeating the PRI, Fox added to the PAN's conservative agenda some promises aimed to appeal to those who opposed the PRI from the left rather than the right. Fox took on as an adviser the well-known former leftist commentator Jorge Casaneda who had previously been an adviser to Cardenas.

Central in his attempt to steal the left agenda was his promise to restart peace talks with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), the indigenous guerrilla army which led an uprising in southern Mexico in 1994. Previous peace talks had stalled since 1997 after the PRI had signed an accord with the EZLN on indigenous rights but then refused to pass legislation to implement it. At the time, the PAN had opposed the accord but one of Fox's election promises was to put legislation to the parliament to implement it.

Now that Fox has won the presidency, popular pressure to implement some of his more populist promises will have to battle against the pressure from within the PAN and its traditional constituency to be true to its own conservative traditions. Most of those selected by Fox to fill posts in the new government are right-wing advocates of neoliberalism, but he has continued to try to court some left support. He has named Casteneda, though now a supporter of neoliberalism anyway, as foreign relations secretary and Mariclaire Acosta, former president of the Mexican Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, as “ambassador for human rights and democracy”.

Peace talks

Since his inauguration on December 1, there has been some positive progress toward peace talks with the EZLN. One of the EZLN's main preconditions for resuming talks is the withdrawal of the army from pro-Zapatista communities in the southern state of Chiapas. Since the conflict began in 1994, the PRI had set up army outposts in or next to most of the communities known to be sympathetic to the Zapatistas. The army and police have a record of complicity in the formation of paramilitary groups which have harassed and killed Zapatista sympathisers, most notoriously in the Acteal massacre of 45 people in 1997.

On the day of his inauguration, Fox ordered the removal of 53 army checkpoints in Chiapas. The actual withdrawal of troops has proceeded more slowly. On December 22, troops were withdrawn from the community of Amador Hernandez, the site of confrontations between troops and Zaptista supporters in 1999.

On December 31, troops were also withdrawn from Jolnachoj. Early that morning 700 Zapatista supporters in their trade mark ski masks had demonstrated outside the military base. Fox decided to diffuse the tension by immediately withdrawing the troops. Troops were also withdrawn from two other communities in January.

Another condition for the recommencement of peace talks is the release of Zapatista prisoners. State governor Pablo Salazar announced the release of the first 20 prisoners on December 29 and promised that there would be further releases to come. Salazar, who took office on December 8, stood for governor as the candidate of a coalition that included the PRD and the PAN.

Fox's attitude toward the other insurgent movements, which began following the Zapatista rebellion and are based in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, is not so congenial. Prior to taking office he had promised to use “all means to eradicate [them]”.

Statements from other members of the PAN have also signalled a more bellicose attitude toward the EZLN. In response to the Zapatista's announcement of their intention to send a delegation of 24 rebel commanders to Mexico City to call for support for the implementation of the San Andres accord, leading PAN members have called for them to be arrested as soon as they leave Chiapas.

Past record of the PAN

The PAN has already held government in a number of states, particularly in the north. Its track record in these states has not shown it to be friendly to workers and the poor. Fox's own background is as a state governor and Coca-Cola executive.

In the northern states, along the border with the US, is the free trade zone where foreign companies are given tax exemptions to set up assembly plants. Unions, apart from PRI-controlled pseudo-unions, have been generally absent in this zone and attempts to organise them have been opposed, often violently.

The most important struggle to set up an independent union in the zone has been at the Korean-owned Han Young plant in the state of Baja California Norte. Workers there have been fighting since 1997 to have their union recognised and to force management to negotiate with their own union.

The state's PAN government has allowed blatantly illegal tactics to be used to prevent the formation of the union. It has allowed violent attacks against the workers and has used the local electoral board, through which the workers have to vote to choose the union to represent them, to engage in open fraud to prevent them choosing an independent union.

In spite of its being pro-business, one of the main hopes placed in the new PAN government is that it will bring an end to financial and electoral corruption. Whilst the PAN's track record on this issue is nothing like that of the PRI, it still points more to an amelioration of PRI-style corruption rather than its elimination. It should also be kept in mind that the PRI is still well-connected and resourced and still holds government in many states as well as influence in many state and non-state institutions such as the army and unions.

Evidence of Fox's own involvement in corruption and illegal electoral practices emerged during his campaign. On June 5, a federal PRD deputy announced that the surname “Fox Quesada” appeared on the list of 747 people and companies whose loans were covered by the government's bank bailout which followed the 1994 economic crash and is estimated to have cost up to US$100 billion. Details have been difficult to obtain, but there is evidence that much of this money went to covering loans taken out by wealthy people and corporations who had the means to repay but simply preferred to pocket the money and allow the loans to be covered by public funds. The name of the PRI's presidential candidate “Labastida Ochoa” also appeared on the list.

Also in June, the Mexican daily La Jornada reported that the US Treasury Department was investigating large transfers of money from the US to Mexico by Fox's brother. The article said that this money might have been transferred for use in Fox's election campaign which would be in violation of Mexican electoral laws.

The same article also said that the First National Bank has filed charges against another of Fox's brothers who had taken out a loan for US$100,000 claiming it was for a company named Vegetales Frescos. The bank claimed that the company turned out to be an empty warehouse located next to Vicente Fox's home.

Tabasco election

Although they were held before Fox took office, the October elections in the PRI-governed state of Tabasco give some indication of how likely it is that electoral fraud can still be conducted with impunity. Shortly prior to the election, several PRD deputies and two PAN deputies were involved in uncovering two houses run by the PRI which contained computers and sophisticated communications equipment along with lists and photos of every voter in the state. However, police and electoral officials simply refused to open any investigation.

When the deputies arrived to raid the second house, 200 elite police agents armed with grenade launchers and tear gas immediately arrived to protect the house, later escorting its occupants with boxes of materials out of the house. Reporters who had filmed the transportation of electoral materials and copies of voter credentials were also caught by the police and beaten.

The election results gave a narrow victory to the PRI over the PRD. The PRD immediately challenged the results. On December 29, following Fox's inauguration, a federal court overturned the results of the election, leaving an impasse as to who would be governor until new elections. Fox himself simply said it was up to the local parties to sort out. Following various manoeuvers and a fistfight in the Tabasco legislature, a federal PRI deputy was made governor until next year when a newly elected governor will take office.

While corruption can be expected to continue in Mexico, it will probably lack the professionalism and efficiency that the PRI machine had developed during the seven decades it ran the state from top to bottom. Since not all levels of government and state institutions are dominated by the same party, the impunity with which the PRI was able to conduct all sorts of illegal activities will no longer be available to the same extent.