Suppress a yawn: It's time for the mayoral elections in Tijuana
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20040612-9999-1c...
Luis Humberto Crosthwaite
June 12, 2004
It's neither the most longed-for nor the most exhilarating moment of our lives. It isn't as exciting as a soccer match, or as fascinating as going on
a vacation. I'm talking about the elections in Tijuana, this time to choose a mayor.
The candidates are here, and they seem like extraterrestrials. They hope people will welcome them with open arms. But this year, like the ones before,
apathy will rule at the ballot boxes. And it's to be expected.
The most annoying part of this electoral season is the need the different parties have to wallpaper the city with their candidates' images. Wherever
one goes, there's a poster of a smiling man. I tend to mistrust these faces because I know they only smile and reach out to people during election
season. The rest of the year, once they're in office, they spend their days locked inside their offices with strict instructions that they're not to
be bothered.
There seems to be more money this year because the billboards are more spectacular than ever. The enormous faces of the candidates are enough to
frighten anyone, as if it were a clash of giants.
I suppose the idea is that the more people see their faces, the better their chances of winning the election. It must be the newest theory, more
recent than holding debates. By now, what matters the least is their ideologies, their way of thinking, of seeing the world, their backgrounds as
politicians or as human beings.
Year after year, all over Mexico, absenteeism at the ballots increases; people who are old enough to vote decide not to exercise their right to do so.
Their way of participating in the democratic process is to stay at home or go shopping on election day.
Recently, the Tijuana daily Frontera conducted a poll about what people did instead of voting. The answers ranged from the obvious, "I had to work
that day," to the ridiculous, like "I forgot" and "I got sick."
However, notwithstanding the varied and sometimes clever answers, they can all be boiled down to just one: "Why vote? It doesn't make a difference."
And the parties apparently don't have, or don't want to have, a strategy to combat this attitude that so affects them.
The party currently in power, the PAN, has Jorge Ramos as its candidate, a young man with no political experience and a slogan so simplistic, it's
funny: "My responsibility is with you, not with anyone else." I don't picture a team of gifted advisers wracking their brains to come up with that
campaign slogan. On the other hand, the PRI, which is dying to get the mayor's office back, plays a chess move that's part desperation and part
deceit. It's running Jorge Hank ? perhaps Tijuana's most controversial man ? as its candidate.
Hank is the son of the man who, in his day, was one of Mexico's most powerful political figures, a governor and frequent secretary of the interior
during the most sordid presidential terms in the country's history, and someone the press has compared to Vito Corleone, Coppola's famous "Godfather."
This is a man, to start off with, whose bodyguards were convicted of assassinating newsman H?ctor F?lix Miranda in 1988. There have been other
"escapades," such as trying to import illegal animals for his private zoo.
More than a civic and democratic process, the electoral campaign is viewed by most residents of Tijuana as a television comedy. And in these
circumstances, the best thing is to stay home and laugh.
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