Monday, May 29, 2006

 

The Incumbency in Mexico, a Double-Edged Sword

 

By Allan Wall

 

Mexican President Vicente Fox is forbidden by law to succeed himself – so regardless of who wins Mexico’s presidential election in July, on December 1, 2006, Vicente Fox must vacate Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) and go back to his ranch in Guanajuato.

 

Nevertheless, Vicente Fox is still very much a figure in this campaign.

No, he’s not a candidate.  But every day you hear something about Vicente Fox related to the presidential campaign!

 

Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Roberto Madrazo constantly attack Fox, accusing him of meddling in the election. AMLO went so far as to tell Fox, “callete chachalaca!” (“callete” means “shut up,” and a chachalaca is a noisy Mexican bird).

 

Even the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) has warned Fox to stay out of the campaign.

 

So what’s going on here?

 

President Fox is prohibited from interfering in the election.  Now that prohibition doesn’t only include using state funds to support his PAN party candidate Felipe Calderon.  That’s obvious.

 

President Fox is also not supposed to publicly endorse Calderon. He’s not even supposed to appear to be endorsing Calderon. As a matter of fact, Fox had better not even appear to imply to endorse Calderon.

 

What’s the big deal? Don’t American presidents endorse their party’s candidates?

Of course they do.  In 2000, President Bill Clinton campaigned for Al Gore, and in 1988 Ronald Reagan campaigned for George H.W. Bush.

But in Mexico things are different.

 

Consider the historical context here. For 71 years the PRI controlled the presidency.  Six years ago, in 2000, Vicente Fox was the first opposition party candidate to break the PRI’s stranglehold on the executive.

In the old PRI days, elections were held, like clockwork, every six years.  It’s just that the PRI utilized its state power to win every election.

 

The days of the one-party state are over, but the memories are still fresh.  That explains why a Mexican president must be very careful to avoid any appearance of unfair advantage for his party.

 

The habitual use of government commercials touting government programs can be interpreted as helping Calderon. So they have been discontinued.

 

The president’s speeches are analyzed for signs of meddling.  If Fox talks about the importance of continuity, that’s interpreted as supporting Calderon, whereas if he says populism is bad that’s a slap at AMLO.

The recent neutrality accord between the candidates and Fox was supposed to put an end to the problems.  And yet, just a few days later Fox was in the U.S., talking about a specific Mexican government program.

 

Oops, here we go again!

 

It’s important to avoid unfair advantage.  Yet no country with presidential elections can ever entirely remove the advantage of the incumbency.  That’s because if things are going well, or perceived as going well or at least better that can help the incumbent’s party.

 

But it’s a double-edged sword.  If things are not perceived to be going well, or there are glaring problems, that can be blamed on the incumbent and hurt his party’s candidate.

 

It’s certainly true in the U.S., and in Mexico too.  Anything positive Fox says about his administration could be construed as an endorsement of Calderon. So Madrazo and AMLO complain about it.

 

But the reverse is also true. Anything bad that happens, whether Fox’s fault or not, can work to the detriment of Calderon’s campaign.

 

So the violence that occurred during recent miners and steelworker’s strikes, and in the San Salvador Atenco/Texcoco region northeast of Mexico City, could have hurt Calderon.  His opponents tried to use it against him, but it didn’t seem to have worked this time.

 

A skillful politician, after all, can avoid some of this negative fallout if he has a credible-sounding explanation, countercharge, or just enough good momentum and publicity.

 

Maybe six years from now, in the next Mexican election, some of these rules can be relaxed. But for now it’s understandable, given the historic context.

 

And yet you can never completely eliminate the double-edged sword of the incumbency.  It’s a part of the political equation that can’t be ignored.

 

——————————

Allan Wall, a MexiData.info guest columnist, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.  He currently resides in Mexico, where he has lived since 1991. He can be reached via e-mail at allan39@prodigy.net.mx.