Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Back to the good old days

Reform didn't work out so well for the PRI, so the dinosaurios of the party seem to have returned to the old winning formula.

Mexico's ex-ruling party is back to its autocratic ways, opponents say

State elections this weekend in Mexico are shaping up as a revealing test of whether the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, on a steady march to retake the presidential palace, has changed its old autocratic ways.

The party, which ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 70 years but lost the presidency in 2000, insists it has reformed and modernized…

In Mexico state, the region of 15 million people that hugs this capital, political parties opposed to the PRI are crying foul.

On Wednesday, they demanded that the results of Sunday's election be nullified because of what they allege are egregious campaign-spending abuses by the PRI and its candidate, Eruviel Avila. The statehouse there is already controlled by the PRI, and the outgoing governor, Enrique Pena Nieto, a PRI member, is the early favorite to win the presidency next year.

The alleged campaign violations, including the use of state money to buy votes, represent a throwback to the patronage politics of the PRI of past decades…

PRI operatives have been handing out everything from rice, paint and cement to gym-class memberships and debit cards in Mexico state. This kind of payola is a time-honored tradition in Mexico and not necessarily illegal…

Jorge Buendia, a political analyst and pollster, said the PRI has been effective at "changing faces" by adding newer and younger politicians to the mix. He noted that Avila is a visibly younger candidate and that his two gray-haired opponents, the PRD's Alejandro Encinas and the PAN's Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, ran for the same office two decades ago.

But, he said, the PRI has been less convincing in changing its practices. "It's new wine in old bottles," Buendia said…