The PRD's crisis was detonated by the resignation of its duly-elected president, Rosario Robles, on 10 August. She has been replaced, thanks to a series of backroom deals, by a hack, Leonel Godoy. The change at the top of the party is important because it shows just what a feuding, fractious bunch the PRD still is. To be fair, Robles had said that she would resign if the party failed to get 20% of the vote in the congressional elections in July: it got just over 18%. It is clear, however, that honouring this promise was not the real reason for her departure. It is worth noting that a surprise and unplanned resignation is almost inconceivable at the other two main parties, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).
The PRD is the youngest of Mexico's main parties, created after the broad left alliance, the Frente Democrático Nacional, probably propelled Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas to victory in the presidential election in 1988: he was cheated of the presidency by blatant manipulation of the count by the then-ruling PRI.
Godoy is close to the Cárdenas family: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is known as the moral leader of the PRD (and has run for national president three times); his son, Lázaro, is now governor of Michoacán. If the cardenistas remain in control of the party in the run-up to the 2006 elections, they may try to block López Obrador from the nomination, proposing either Cuauhtémoc or Lázaro in his place.
Cuauhtémoc, although out of the country when Robles resigned, has clearly been active behind the scenes. He had not been impressed by the party's performance in the mid-term election, pointing out that while it had won more seats in the lower chamber, it had also lost 3m votes as the turnout in the election collapsed to just over 42%. A report on the party's performance by the executive committee endorsed many of Cuauhtémoc's criticisms, pointing out that in at least 20 of the country's 32 states the party was only a marginal influence.
The party's strength is in and around Mexico City. This is the country's most important electoral battleground. In the past three elections, whichever party or leader took Mexico City and its environs has won the election. The area had swung to the PRD and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1997; went to President Fox in 2000 and then went back to the PRD this year. Apart from Michoacán, where Lázaro is the only perredista governor not to have been a fully paid up member of the PRI, the party depends on splits in the other parties to win significant elections.
The problems
The PRD's problems range from debt to endemic infighting. No one is sure how much the PRD owes: Robles says that the party owes M$258m (US$25m); others say that it owes M$658m. Robles, who only became party president in March last year, after a hugely expensive national election, clearly felt that she was better off resigning than trying to shore up her exposed position. Unusually for the PRD, she is regarded as an independent, although she served out the final part of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's term as mayor of Mexico City while he prepared for the 2000 presidential election.
Robles was unpopular with members of the party because she was in favour of nominating dissidents from the other parties, notably the PRI, as PRD candidates for all sorts of elections. This policy produced mixed results. On the plus side, almost a dozen disaffected federal deputies joined the PRD during the last congressional term. On the other hand, the adoption of PRI defectors as PRD gubernatorial candidates in San Luis Potosí and Colima led to disaffection amongst local party activists. Cárdenas, in particular, was unhappy with this policy, which upset one of his allies in SLP, Salvador Nava Calvillo.
Robles did little to sort out the party's chaotic finances. It has been clear for sometime that the party's financial management was in a mess. The evidence for this is the party's failure to meet the rules imposed by the Instituto Federal Electoral. This has led to the party being fined regularly.
The party's financial problems were compounded by its heavy use of TV and other media during the recent congressional elections. Robles hired a media specialist, Publicorp, for the campaign. This decision paid off in terms of seats, but was expensive. This high spending (and success) opened up a flank which was exploited by Robles's many critics. There is a strong purist wing in the party, centred around Cárdenas, which believes that old-fashioned rallies and campaign tours are the only proper way to fight elections and that there is something un-Mexican about using more modern methods of campaigning.
Robles's predecessor, Amalia García, who led the party to electoral disaster (and near extinction in 2000) claimed that Robles had exceeded her authority by agreeing the contract with Publicorp. García asserted that the PRD's executive committee had been kept in the dark about the contract: she said that any contract for over 10% of the PRD's annual budget had to be cleared by the national executive.
Robles argued that she had pulled the party around during her 15 months in charge. She pointed out that she inherited a party that had been almost broken by its disastrous performance in the 2000 elections. The party's representation in congress had plummeted to just over 50 seats (from 126) after an ill-advised decision to go into alliances with a host of smaller parties. The source of the alliance idea was Cárdenas, who is still dreaming of reconstructing the broad alliance that probably won him the 1988 presidential election. Robles also noted that when she took over, the party already had a debt of M$150m.
The party's interim president, Leonel Godoy, is a strong supporter of Cárdenas. The party says that it will hold a party convention within a year to pick a new party president to take it through to the next presidential election. López Obrador appears to be pushing for Ricardo Monreal, a PRI defector who is now governor of Zacatecas, to take over the job. Godoy, a native of Michoacán, was number two in the state government of Michoacán following Lázaro's victory in the election last year. Previously, he was López Obrador's law and order minister in Mexico City. Before that he had served Robles and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in their administrations of Mexico City.
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