JLNobody wrote: Pobre Mexico, it is run by demons.
JL, I've told you a million times not to exaggerate! :wink:
JLNobody wrote: The political culture of Mexico does not make room for legitimate statemen, only for power hungry chronies.
Obviously, I disagree with the patronizing first phrase.
In the last half century, Mexico has lived a deep transition as for the source of legitimacy of the politicians.
Before that it was a "revolutionary" legitimacy. The winners of the revolution got into power by their weapons. The party was only a civilized way to prevent that the political struggle among the "revolutionaries" would be bloody.
Later, elections were used as a way of legitimizing -by popular vote- the "revolutionary" leadership. In the late 60's and early 70s this method showed its limits. The student and people's movement of 1968 and the different guerrilla groups that followed made it quite clear. In 1976, the presidential candidate of the PRI ran alone: the emperor had no clothes.
This lead to a series of
successive electoral reforms that allowed the left wing parties to participate and created our two tier system: part of Congress is elected by districts; another part is elected proportionally to party votes.
It would be naïve to think that those reforms are the result of the genius of the PRI: they were fought for by people from very different ideological leanings, but all concerned about the stablishment and growth of a true democracy.
Everybody, specially outside Mexico, was asking "When will the wolf awaken?". The fact is that when it did, it awoke in the polling booths. It was a democratic wolf.
After decades of struggle against electoral fraud and for citizen's liberties, we've made it... in a sense.
We have a legitimate President, chosen in elections most of the world would envy as for their fairness (Mexico is considered, alongside Germany, the nation in the world with the fairest elections). A legitimate Congress. Legitimate governors. Legitimate local legislatures.
We do have a lousy political class. Some of our best statesmen (Salinas) ruined their job by making unholy alliances with "power hungry cronies", as JLNobody says. Others (like Fox), do not base their government on those kind of alliances, but don't have the same political stature. Our Congress is more dedicated to bickering than to legislating, and the debate level is sometimes shameful. But that doesn't make it less legitimate, or -actually- makes our democracy worse than the average.
JLNobody wrote: And if they do mean well, like, perhaps Cuahtemoc Cardenas, they are rendered ineffective by their isolation.
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is an important figure in Mexico's road to democracy. His 1988 campaign made the first tight race in the history of Mexican presidential elections.
Cárdenas lost that election and -against the opinion of some of us-, even if he knew he lost, he alleged he was robbed (there was a lot of fraud, but not enough to change winners), but was wise enough to not "set the prairie on fire", but build a party.
IMO, he made several mistakes while building the Party of the Democratic Revolution (he chose the worst allies), and paid for them in the election of '94.
When he won the Mexico City majoral election in 1997, there was a lot of hope. He did a mediocre job. I think Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was rendered innefficient by his own inefficiency.
JLNobody wrote: I would like to agree to just 'wait and see", but that's been the plebian attitude since the Mexican Revolution.
If the plebian attitude had been so, we'd still have the PRI in power with the "full load", as they used to say.
