Mexico & Nafta - 12 October 2004

The 3 October elections for the state congress and municipalities in Chiapas and for municipalities in Oaxaca did not turn out to be the triumphs the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) had expected. To be fair the PRI did succeed in recapturing control of the big cities in the poor southern state of Chiapas and the equally poor and violent state of Oaxaca, albeit on very low turnouts. The PRI, however, lost ground badly in the state congress in Chiapas. This means that the final round of this year's regional elections, in Tlaxcala, Puebla, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, will be particularly important for all the parties. The big contest, for the presidency, takes place in July 2006.

The PRI lost control of the 40-seat state congress in Chiapas. The dominant party in the state congress is now the Alianza por Chiapas. This is virtually the same alliance, composed of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) and the Partido del Trabajo, which took the state governorship from the PRI in 2000. The difference is that the Partido Verde Ecologista de México has defected from the Alianza por Chiapas to the PRI.

The Alianza por Chiapas has 13 of the 24 directly-elected state congress seats, and the PRI-PVEM alliance 11. In Sunday's election, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional refused to take part and the turnout was low, which should have boosted the PRI. 

The PRI did recapture two important cities, Tuxtla Gutiérrez (from the Partido Acción Nacional) and San Cristóbal de las Casas (from the Alianza Social) but it lost 16 municipalities in total. The Alianza now holds 55 of the 118 municipalities in the state while the PRI has 56. 

Oaxaca
In the elections in the neighbouring state of Oaxaca, although the PAN lost the state capital Oaxaca to the PRI, the PRD took 17 municipalities from the PRI. The gubernatorial and state congress elections were held in August. The PRI narrowly hung on to the governorship.

In the municipal elections, the PRD even won in San José Estancia Grande where its candidate, Guadalupe Avila, was shot dead by the outgoing incumbent on 28 September. Her husband, Israel Reyes, will be mayor in her stead, even though he wanted to remain living and working in the US. Only 329 people in San José Estancia bothered to vote and the PRD won by 150 to 104 for the PRI. 

Of the 148 Oaxaca municipalities which have declared results, the PRI has 69; the PRD 48 and the PAN 22. The two smaller parties, Convergencia and the Partido Verde Ecologista have three and five municipalities respectively. 

The PRI went into the election with 86 municipalities and the PRD had 36. The main reason why the PRI won the state capital was that the opposition parties split the anti-PRI vote. The PRI, however, lost the important port of Salina Cruz and only just hung on to two other towns, Matí­as Romero and Huajuapan. The PRI was particularly annoyed to have lost Juchitán to the PRD by 329 votes. The PAN is also complaining about the way the election was held in this town and the activities of the Coalición Obrero Campesina Estudiantil del Isthmo. The PAN's candidate was a popular evangelical of Zapotec origins. 

The cities
The PRI played up its victories in Oaxaca and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas. The PAN had run both cities for nine years. Across the country, the PAN is known as the street-lamp party because its support is so overwhelmingly urban. The fact that this support is now either staying at home or defecting to the PRI should be good news for Roberto Madrazo, the leader of the PRI who is the party's likely candidate for the presidential elections in 2006.

In Tuxtla, the PAN's defeat came as an abrupt shock to the party. Exit polls showed that the PRI's Juan Sabines, son of a former state governor had won almost 60% of the votes cast.

The loss of Oaxaca is also a blow to the PAN. Altogether there were elections in 118 municipalities in Chiapas and 152 in Oaxaca. Both states are poor and have, until recently, been fiefs of the PRI at the state level. Besides the 152 municipalities in Oaxaca which used elections to choose their governments, there were also 418 municipalities in the same state which used traditional Indian systems, where the winner is nominated.

The turnout in both elections was low. The state electoral authorities reckon that in urban areas 65% of the electorate did not bother to vote. In rural areas about half the voters turned out. 

VERACRUZ: Gerardo Buganza, the loser in the race for the governorship of Veracruz, said on 12 September that he would launch a peaceful campaign to get the result overturned. Buganza lost by less than 0.8% of the votes cast in a high-turnout election to Fidel Herrera from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which has ruled Veracruz since the Mexican Revolution. Buganza is from the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) to which President Vicente Fox belongs.

Buganza has already asked the PRI governor of Veracruz to overturn the result. He has also asked the (PAN) interior minister, Santiago Creel, to intervene. The Veracruz state election authority is dominated by the PRI. Nationally, the PAN seems to be lining up behind Buganza. At the rally to launch the campaign to overturn the result, the keynote speaker was Francisco Barrio Terrazas, the leader of the PAN deputies in the federal congress. Barrio told the PRI governor, Miguel Aleman Velasco, that he would not know what hit him if he refused to act to investigate the result of the election. Buganza threatened to jail a number of state officials once he took office. He said that the state had to give a lead to the country and that what had happened in Veracruz (in terms of cheating by the PRI) was the final straw that would break the camel's back.