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By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal This
reporter was on the ground to observe his first run-up to a Mexican national election in
1948. My Assignment Editor had instructed me to divide my time between Chihuahua,
and Mexico City, which I did. The two locations provided me with a dramatic
comparison between Mexican rural and urban political activities. It’s
pertinent to mention that the exchange rate at that point in time was 8.45 pesos, to one
U. S. dollar. The PRI (Partido Revolucionario
Institutional) had already been in power for 19 years, and showed no inclination to
relinquish its tight grip on the reins of government. Fifty-two
years later, this same reporter has just witnessed another Mexican national election. The vantage point this time was from Guadalajara,
state of Jalisco, and Mexico’s second largest city.
Direct observation of the local scene, however, has been importantly
augmented by four television sets, local T-V station output, Direct-TV satellite feed,
several AM-FM radios, and a Kenwood TS-940S all-wave ham set. With this equipment list, it’s safe to say
that little pre-election or election day activity has been beyond visual or electronic
reach. Through
months of the usual posing and preening, interminable speeches, glowing promises (if the
deponent is elected) and dire predictions (should the opposition candidate, Dios forfend,
emerge victorious) the air has rarely been clear of political
sounds and fury. Giant likenesses of the
several aspiring leaders smile, smirk or scowl down upon us from lofty vantage points over
each of the important urban thoroughfares. To
this, add electronic suasion through the countless loudspeakers in radios and television,
on “sound vehicles” running up and down the streets, and hand-held bull-horns in
parks and other points of citizen convergence. The total adds up to a persistent
din, whose decibels threaten both eardrums and basic sanity. The
election polling only takes place when the long-suffering populace has reached a point of
political exhaustion beyond which nothing else remains to do except vote and get it over
with. Political
forecasting, especially since the advent of electronic communications, has been turned
into a 21st
Century art form. Public opinion sampling,
based on a boggling assortment of arcane formulae, pseudo-scientific evaluations by
self-ordained political pundits, tenured and unemployed university professors and the full
assortment of local and network news analysts, seek to give their audiences a prior peek
under the veil of secrecy which is supposed to protect ballot confidentiality. Exit-polling
is the political equivalent of dipping an inquiring finger into the cake-frosting
bowl, to see if perhaps the mix needs something else.
But exit-polling is for the purpose of finding out how people have voted,
and from this information, extrapolating a result that constitutes a news “scoop”
– while the election officials are still busy counting. My Assignment Editor wanted me to do some exit-polling, as a means of
adding some procedural substance to whatever other forecasting methods I might choose to
employ. A directive from an Assignment Editor is not negotiable. Hence, this news scavenger arose at a highly
unaccustomed hour, sallied forth with mini-recorder in pocket and notebook in hand, to
collar voters in four different locations, as they emerged from the polling places, and
asked them which candidate they favored. In the exit-polling activity it’s considered bad form to directly ask,
“Who did you vote for?” But
obviously, this is what we want to know. There
are some other questions, also, intended to ‘validate’ the question concerning
candidate choice. My validation questions
were: 1. Are
you employed? 2. Do
you work for any branch of government? 3. Do
you have any family members in government jobs? Since
government is the largest employer in Mexico, a trick it learned from the big neighbor on
the other side of the Rio Grande, this fact by itself is
considered a strong incentive for maintaining the status-quo. Should an
interviewee tell a pollster that he (or his brother-in-law) holds a cushy job in the
political realm, his claim to having voted for the opposition party might be taken with
more than the usual grain of salt. So
this reporter ventured forth to ask his questions, dutifully record them, and write them
down in the ever-present reportorial notebook. After
which I returned to my domicile for a seriously belated breakfast and more electronic
monitoring of the strident political analysts, reporters, party spokesmen, ‘man in
the street’ interviews, and such. In
spite of these unsseemly distractions, I nevertheless enjoyed my breakfast. Then I climbed the stairs to my “sanctum sanctorum” to search my soul, write my report and venture my own forecast of the election outcome. (This
is a terribly demanding responsibility, when one realizes that countless eager readers are
quite frozen in a state of suspended animation, waiting for their favorite reporter’s
advisory on the final result – several hours in advance of its eventuality. (Note to editor:
This is a joke, and you may cut it if you wish. LDB) Of the two-hundred-twenty-seven voters I spoke with,
all but nineteen of them answered my questions. Of these, all but sixty-eight were
employed in some branch of government, or had close relatives thus politically indentured.
Of the one-hundred –forty respondents who theoretically were entitled to a candid
choice, seventy-one of them said they ‘favored’ PAN’s Vicente Fox;
fifty-three leaned toward PRI and Labastida; eleven said they liked Cardenas; and five
lacked coherency - which can probably be
attributed to the unusually early hour on a Sunday morning. Taken
by itself, my exit-poll results seemed to portend a clear-cut victory for the PAN
candidate, Vicente Fox. He is a handsome man,
with two very attractive teenaged daughters. He has had a distinguished commercial career
with Coca Cola (a veritable Mexican icon) and sports a well-tended and luxuriant moustache
(in the “Poncho” Villa style). All
of these are important points on the ‘Win’ side of the electoral balance scales. But they are not the only considerations. This scribe’s exposure to Mexican politics goes back to 1947. During this extended exposure to the political skills, devices, artifices, mendacity, ballot-box assaults, intimidation, murders, kidnappings, bribery and related pressures on the voting public, I have been greatly impressed by both the versatility and the persistence of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. When
weighed against the perfect record of a political party that has enjoyed seventy-one
successive years of unbroken incumbency, and that has repeatedly and unflinchingly
undertaken any and every imaginable kind of both civil and criminal skullduggery to
perpetuate their national ascendancy, a few exit-poll responses appear to be weak tea,
indeed. Recognizing
what I assumed to be the obvious, in response to a friend who queried me early on Sunday
afternoon, I replied: "The
way I sort it out, Fox is a well-trained executive with limited local political exposure. Labastida is an old PRI politico, who will likely
confirm and continue seven decades of nepotism and wall-to-wall corruption. "Cardenas
has nothing to commend him except the fact that his father was once president of Mexico.
Since he has already lost two presidential elections, this one will make it three. "My
choice would be Fox, since - after seventy-one years - it has to be time for a change. But
it won't happen. "Cardenas
will syphon off 13 to 15% of the vote. (he actually got 16%) The Chiapans and the other indigenous will vote
for their own ethnic candidate. Fox will make
a good showing, but Cardenas will take the votes that Fox has to have that could allow him
to win. "So,
write Cardenas down as the 'spoiler', Fox as the loser, and Labastida as the winner by 3
or 4 percentage points". ======================= Another
correspondent inquired: “ What will
happen in Mexico if the PRI loses?” To which I replied: “The sun will come up in the west.” From the high-ground of twenty-four hours later, it’s easy to see how my judgmental error occurred. After so many years of observing Mexican politics in action, this reporter was prepared for anything except an honest election. It
had never happened before. Why should it
happen now? After seven decades of consistent
victories at the polls, and whether keeping that record intact called for stealing ballot
boxes, stuffing ballot boxes, murdering an opposition candidate, or passing out voter
“propinas” in all of the questionable voting districts, I just expected
the PRI bosses to do it one more time. Why not?
After
winning twelve straight elections, through whatever devices winning required, why would
they quietly submit to losing this one? It
now must be added that winning has rarely afforded me more pleasure than this loss. I am delighted to have been wrong. Mexico has been held in the viciously corrupt
grip of PRI for much too long. Ironically,
the real hero of this shattering event is Ernesto Zedillo, the outgoing PRI Presidente. Zedillo became president of Mexico, courtesy of
the political murder of Donaldo Collosio. Had
Collosio lived, Zedillo would never have worn the presidential sash. Perhaps
this tragedy, occurring so closely to him, was sufficient to convince him that impunity
and violence had persisted long enough. That,
indeed, it was time for some deep and lasting changes in the Mexican political landscape. Whatever the incentive that drove him to do it,
Ernesto Zedillo, more than any other individual, was the principal architect of yesterday’s
miracle at the nations ballot boxes. He
will be hailed by some as a larger-than-life hero. He
will be roundly damned by PRI principals and
the party hangers-on, as a traitor to the cause that elevated him to the highest office in
the land. Whatever
the partisan judgements, history must recognize Ernesto Zedillo as “a technocrat with
a conscience”. He is the man who, more
than any other, paved the way for the return of democracy to Mexico, after an absence of
seventy-one years. Whether hero or traitor
– or both – he has to stand out as Mexico’s man for the ages. Largely
because of him, yesterday, July 3, 2000, Mexico, at long last, came of
political age. Lorenzo
Dee Belveal ========= E N D ========== Copyright © 2000 Lorenzo Dee Belveal
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