MEXICO CITY, May 22 –– Out with the new, in with the old. That seems
to be the latest campaign strategy of Francisco Labastida Ochoa, the presidential
candidate of Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
The party, known by its initials as the PRI, announced a rebirth last
year with great fanfare: no more election fraud, no more top-down decision-making.
The authoritarian ways were dead, it said, and a new, democratic PRI was
born, closer to the people and respectful of the law.
Then came the opinion polls last month showing Labastida was beaten
in a nationally televised debate and could possibly lead his party to its
first presidential defeat in 71 years. With the clock rapidly ticking down
to the July 2 election, the wisdom of the past suddenly became apparent.
Back came the PRI's hard-line wing, known as the "dinosaurs," to help
revive Labastida's sagging campaign. Chief among the returnees: former
Puebla state governor Manuel Bartlett, the former interior minister and
renowned electoral alchemist accused of faking a computer crash allegedly
used by the PRI to steal the 1988 presidential contest.
Newspapers and magazines have been unsparing.
"Panic in the PRI," screamed the cover of the weekly political magazine
Proceso. Cartoons showed dinosaurs romping across Mexico like a scene from
"Jurassic Park." Many analysts declared the death of the "new PRI," a much
ballyhooed concept designed by party reformers to shore up support and
satisfy the demand of Mexican voters for fuller democracy and fairer elections.
"The new PRI never existed, it was a fantasy, a mirage," columnist Rafael
Alvarez Cordero wrote in El Universal newspaper, adding that the party
would now turn to what he described as Plan B: "The PRI never loses, and
when it loses, it cheats."
"Francisco Labastida could well be an honest man who wants to distance
himself from the vices of the old PRI," analyst Sergio Sarmiento wrote
in Reforma newspaper. "But his public affirmations don't help him much
when it's so clear that the old PRI, the PRI of the dinosaurs, the PRI
that robs ballots, the PRI of governors who try to manipulate the media,
is still alive and well and supports Labastida."
In a sign that Labastida's campaign is not the only one running scared,
all three of Mexico's major party presidential candidates jointly agreed
Sunday to cancel the second and only remaining debate of the campaign,
which had been scheduled for Tuesday. Although the parties blamed the cancellation
on inability to agree on a format, analysts said none of the candidates
wanted to risk the unpredictability of another televised slugfest.
Labastida campaign officials said that the resurgence of the PRI's old
guard does not signify a return to the PRI's old ways and its well documented
history of vote-rigging and coercion. They said Labastida and the PRI itself
remain committed to the party's internal reforms and a clean election.
The "essence" of the new PRI "is internal democracy and electoral competition
within the law, within the framework of a level playing field," said Javier
Trevino, a top Labastida campaign official. "This is a very important change
within the PRI. . . . It's a commitment to internal democracy, fair competition
and the law."
Bartlett--the ex-governor who is in charge of mobilizing the PRI in
states currently controlled by opposition parties--and others were brought
on simply "to strengthen the campaign," Trevino said.
A call by Labastida a week ago for Mexico's 3 million government bureaucrats
to actively support him was also taken as a sign that his candidacy is
in trouble, and was seen by some as a potentially opening for the government
to start boosting the PRI's candidate illegally.
"The old ways are coming back to Mexico, and we are very worried," said
Carlos Salazar, a spokesman for the top opposition challenger, Vicente
Fox of the right-center National Action Party, or PAN.
The sense of turmoil within the ruling party began with a nationally
televised debate April 25 and opinion polls showing that as many as 75
percent of people believed Labastida lost the debate to Fox. Subsequent
polls showed Fox--who has called Labastida everything from "transvestite"
to "shorty"--surging ahead of the PRI candidate by as many as five percentage
points. Two new polls were released last week. One showed Fox trailing
Labastida by two points; another gave Fox a five point lead.
Trevino blasted Mexican polls as "very biased" because they rely heavily
on telephone interviews. Surveys show that only about a third of all Mexicans
have phones, and they are concentrated in the hands of wealthier people
in urban areas, which underestimates the PRI's overwhelming electoral strength
among the rural poor.
At the same time, Trevino acknowledged that Labastida's own polls show
the gap between him and Fox narrowing. In mid- March, according to the
surveys by the Pearson polling group, Labastida held a commanding 17 point
lead. Seven weeks later, in early May, Labastida's lead had dwindled to
just six points, his polls show.
Most analysts now predict a very tight vote in July, but many continue
to say that the race is the PRI's to lose, noting many elements in its
favor, including:
* The PRI's overwhelming strength in rural areas. There are hundreds
of towns where the PRI traditionally wins 80 or even 90 percent of the
vote, and where the opposition has no presence.
* The impact of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, candidate of the leftist Democratic
Revolutionary Party. Some analysts say Cardenas is much stronger than his
current poll numbers indicate. Most analysts believe a strong Cardenas
showing this year would hurt Fox more than Labastida.
* The PRI's ability to get out the vote. The PRI machine has proven
that it can mobilize its supporters on Election Day, but the PAN often
has trouble getting its supporters to vote.
* The potential for fraud. Few people expect a massive, centrally coordinated vote-rigging operation of the sort the PRI conducted in past elections, principally because the election this year will be closely scrutinized by a new, autonomous Federal Election Institute, a more aggressive and independent press, and as many as 9,000 international and Mexican election monitors. Nonetheless, Election Day vote-buying is a deeply rooted Mexican tradition, and not just in rural areas.