Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, November 19, 2010

Coalition politics in Mexico

Coalitions formed to defeat the PRI can produce some seemingly contradictory governments at state levels. What can happen at the national level where the PRI has already been "demoted?"

New congress in troubled Mexican state sworn in
Citizens who formerly led street protests and manned barricades in the troubled southern state of Oaxaca were sworn in as members of the local congress Saturday, in what the governor-elect called a historic change…

The protesters accused outgoing Gov. Ulises Ruiz of brutality, electoral fraud and ordering the killing of demonstrators. Federal police broke up the protest in October 2006, after the city's center had been controlled by Ruiz's opponents for several months…

Ruiz narrowly defeated Gov.-elect Gabino Cue in 2004 elections that many claimed were marred by fraud. Cue won this time around, in July, with the backing of a coalition of leftist and conservative parties [PAN and PRD]…

While some criticized such coalitions - which won three governorships this year - as an ideological stew, they allowed locally popular figures to unseat the long-standing rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held Mexico's presidency and most state governments without interruption for 71 years until it lost the presidency in 2000…

The new leader of the state congress is Eufrosina Cruz, who led protests after being barred from seeking the mayorship of her small Oaxacan town in 2007 because she is a woman.

Traditional Indian governance rules - which have legal standing at the municipal level in many towns in Oaxaca - ban women from running and in some cases voting in local races, even though Mexico's federal Constitution prohibits such discrimination...

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