When authoritarian regimes fall, the former ruling party's leaders are frequently chased out of the country or jailed. In other cases, they recede into irrelevance. And from time to time, they learn to play by the new rules of democracy, and stage a comeback. Mexico's PRI does not quite fit any of these patterns. Until recently, the party's trajectory appeared to be one of a rather slow decline into oblivion. But the last few months have seen a turnaround in the PRI's prospects, and the party suddenly seems competitive again.
For the last several years, the strength of the PRI has often seemed to reside in its continued political control of areas of Mexico that have still failed to fully democratize. The party continues to rule many local jurisdictions where it has not lost power for decades. The PRI also still maintains a healthy number of seats in the national legislature that it has never lost. It now has fewer representatives in Mexico's lower house than its two major rivals, the PRD and the PAN, but it still has more senators than the PRD.
Though the PRI has managed to hold on to some of its old bastions, it has also been slowly hemorrhaging support for decades, and frustration with years of misrule seemed to finally be catching up with the party after 2000. The PRI lost respectably in the presidential contest that year, but flailed hopelessly in the 2006 presidential elections. It appeared unwilling to reform itself, selecting an atavistic candidate associated with the worst abuses of the old regime. The result was a predictable fall to third place in national polls.
But the future is starting to look brighter for the PRI. The party recently ranked as the most preferred electoral choice in a national poll (conducted by El Universal) of voters looking to 2009 mid-term congressional elections. Interestingly, the poll also showed that, in the past few months, the number of self-declared independents in Mexico has declined, and the PRI has been the largest gainer. While 25 percent of respondents identified with the PRI in August, 2008, that number had increased to 32 percent by October. Most surprising of all, respondents are moving toward the PRI even though the person they identify most with the party is the much-lambasted former president Carlos Salinas. This suggests that the party has an appeal that goes beyond the charisma of its current leadership, one that draws on its historically deep roots in Mexico.
The PRI's bounce isn't just about voters talking the talk. In recent weeks, they have been walking to the polls to pull the lever for the party as well. The PRI made substantial gains in the state of Guerrero a couple weeks ago, taking back major cities (such as Acapulco) from its chief rival, the PRD. And this weekend, the PRI recaptured the important industrial town of Torreón in Coahuila from Mexico's other major party, the PAN, regaining complete control of the state's twenty electoral districts. In other words, the PRI is fending off both of its rivals where it counts–at the ballot box.
Some of this is just throwing the bums out in a country that is increasingly under siege by violent drug cartels and only meekly protected by an inchoate state security apparatus. In this respect, the PRI is benefiting from incumbency fatigue rather than building up a new support base. But the fact that some voters are self-identifying with the party, and not just voting for it in order to vote against others, suggests a potentially deeper shift in the electorate. After eight years of PAN rule and democracy, some voters are starting to wonder whether things are really better than they used to be.
The leftish PRD's strident attacks on the PAN have struck a chord with some Mexicans, but others no doubt do not see much to celebrate in the party's rowdy takeovers of city streets and Congress alike. The PRI, by contrast, finally looks like a moderate party: willing to negotiate with the PAN to pass legislation, but also willing to push back on some issues without fomenting institutional crisis. The party has demonstrated that it is possible to disagree with the president while still respecting the legislative process. The phoenix has been rising slowly, but 2009 looks set to be a comeback year for the ex-authoritarians.
Printer-friendly version