Baja Bernie
`Normal` Nomad Correspondent
Posts: 2962
Registered: 8-31-2003
Location: Sunset Beach
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Mood: Just dancing through life
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Reading for the Expats and others who would become involved in the political process in Baja
August 21, 2007
Baja California News
Sorting Out a Pivotal State Election
Now that the initial clouds of smoke have begun clearing from Baja
California's August 5 election, political actors and analysts are
assessing the local, national and international repercussions of the
raucous race. Final results announced by the Baja California State
Election Council show the conservative National Action Party (PAN) of
President Felipe Calderon as the winner. Not only did the PAN manage to
retain control of the governor's office, but the party re-conquered the
city halls of Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate as well.
The PAN also preserved its majority in the state congress, upping its
representation from 13 to 15 seats, while the opposition Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) remained with 9 seats and the center-left Party
of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) dropped from two seats to one. Two
small parties that united with the PAN are also expected to gain seats in
the state legislature.
Despite pre-election polls that showed a neck-to-neck race between PAN
gubernatorial candidate Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan and principal rival
Jorge Hank Rhon of the PRI-led So That You Can Live Better Alliance, the
final tallies gave Osuna a large victory margin of 54,000 votes. "The
people have spoken," declared a triumphant Osuna.
In the view of the PRI, however, the election is far from over. State
party leader Mario Madrigal Magana announced August 21 that the PRI and
two allied parties will file a legal challenge with the State Electoral
Council that seeks to annul the election results.
Ironically, the PRI is basing its case on alleged irregularities that were
once perfected by Mexico's former ruling party. According to Magana,
police intimidation, vote-buying and the interference of PAN Governor
Elorduy Walther during the political campaign all made the election
illegitimate.
"We have all the legal elements to challenge the elections with the goal
of annulling them," affirmed Madrigal.
For the moment, however, the PAN's August 5 victory is sweet relief for a
political force that is beset by divisions and which has lost key
electoral strongholds in elections in Yucatan and Aguascalientes this
year. But Osuna and his fellow Panistas weren't the only winners. Good
old-fashioned political trickery, lavish spending, negative campaigning,
voter abstention, and the seemingly unstoppable Elba Esther Gordillo
emerged as the other prime victors.
Feared violence did not materialize, but only days after the vote the
secretary-general of Tijuana branch of the Mexican Green Party, Fausto
Rodriguez was briefly kidnapped by an armed commando. Rodriguez had
earlier had earlier resigned from the PRI-Green party alliance to protest
the imposition of candidates, but it is not known if his kidnapping was in
any way connected to the election.
As usual, most major US media were oblivious to the national and
binational implications of a Mexican state election, even though this one
happened smack dab on the border of the US's largest state when
unresolved immigration, border walls, narco-violence and trade and
investment policy issues define US-Mexico relations. Running against the
mainstream current was the San Francisco Chronicle, which ran a full-page
election day story that discussed gubernatorial hopeful Hank's alleged
ties to organized crime.
In the days preceding the vote, mutual accusations of unfair campaigning,
vote-buying, police harassment, and government coercion at all levels
splashed the headlines. On election eve, recordings of police band radio
conversations between Tijuana municipal police and alleged drug
traffickers were leaked to the media and played on the airwaves.
Allegedly in the possession of the Office of the Federal Attorney General
(PGR) since 2004, it is uncertain how the federal police used the
recordings prior to their release three years later; the timing of the
audiotapes' leaking, reminiscent of the Carlos Ahumada videotapes which
showed PRD politicians accepting suitcases of money in the run-up to the
2006 presidential elections, also raised intriguing , still-unanswered
questions. Coupled with PAN campaign spots that implied a connection
between organized crime and former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank, the tapes
could have been a decisive, last-minute blow to the PRI's controversial
standard-bearer.
The leader of the massive national teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo.
landed another dizzying punch to Hank. Long embroiled in a feud with key
Hank backer and former PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo,
Gordillo arrived on the scene to rally her troops in a get-out-the-vote
drive for Osuna. The PAN's victorious candidate recognized that hundreds
of mobilized teachers contributed to his victory.
For Gordillo, the political alliance with the PAN was a matter of
expediency. "We aren't Panistas, because we aren't conservatives, but we
are at a special juncture," she argued just prior to the election.
Some analysts noted the similarities between Gordillo's role in the Baja
election and her crucial support for PAN presidential candidate Felipe
Calderon in last year's election, a political move that is credited by
some for pushing Calderon over the top in his tight race with the PRD's
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Undoubtedly, the PAN victory in Baja
California reinforces Gordillo's growing clout on the national political
scene, and it will have repercussions in the struggle over the management
and direction of the National Education Ministry. In Baja, Gordillo will
likely wield influence through the teacher-based National Alliance Party
that teamed with the PAN in this year's electoral coalition.
Used to winning the spin of the roulette wheel, losing PRI gubernatorial
candidate and billionaire gaming businessman Jorge Hank expressed no
public bitterness at his defeat. Hank's conciliatory tone contrasted with
state PRI leader Madrgial's vows to overturn the election.
Commenting that "sleeping" would soothe his post-election blues, Hank
blamed delays in opening voting booths, popular fear of violence and voter
abstention for his defeat. "I didn't know how to motivate the people,"
Hank conceded.
In one press conference with reporters held at his "eccentric offices"
outside the Agua Caliente race track, Hank waxed philosophical about the
election outcome. Speaking in a room furnished with Mayan effigies in
sexual positions, draped animal parts and a large surrealist painting by
artist Napiq that depicts scenes of Hank as a clown and a hooded man
preparing to decapitate a smiling woman, Hank vowed he'd remain a loyal
"soldier" in the PRI's army.
Abstentionism was another big winner on August 5. Only about 41 percent of
eligible voters turned out to the polls, a figure that was slightly better
than the 36.5 percent turnout in the last state election held in 2001.
Nonetheless, the 2001 and 2007 state elections registered sharp huge drops
in voter participation since 1995, when fully 63 percent of the electorate
showed up to cast ballots.
Gaston Luken, an ex-president of the state election council, and Victor
Alejandro Espinoza, a political scientist with the Colegio de la Frontera
Norte, agreed that widespread public rejection of the candidates and their
political projects factored into this year's low turnout. Both Luken and
Espinoza identified migration as another key element in explaining the
poor voter numbers. They contended that Baja California's location on the
US border lures a constant stream of potential voters across the frontier
before election time.
Historically lacking a significant presence in Baja California, the center
left PRD party was relegated to an even more obscure political corner in
this year's election. Postulating Jaime Hurtado de Mendoza as its
gubernatorial candidate, the PRD only managed to pull in about 2 percent
of the votes. Once again, the party failed to capitalize at the state
level on the multi-party alliance and grassroots movement that
characterized Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's bid for president last year.
The Convergence party, which supported Lopez Obrador in 2006 and is
currently allied with the PRD in the federal congress, ran a woman for
governor, Mercedes Maciel, who threw her support behind Hank at the last
minute. Jaime Martinez Veloz, a columnist for Mexico City's La Jornada
daily, assessed the August 5 election as a wake-up call for the border
left.
"The left has the moral obligation to undertake a profound internal
reflection of its role and its place in the border problematic," Martinez
wrote. "Reality obliges us to come up with an articulated program that
puts the concerns and problems of the citizenry at the center of our
political activity. Otherwise we will not have a future in the societies
of the northern part of the country."
Nationally, the PRD's embarrassing Baja performance is likely to wind up
as more loose ammunition in the party's internal battle between followers
of Lopez Obrador and centrist politicians who are more inclined to
negotiating with President Calderon. Both sides can claim grist from the
crumbling Baja mill.
Beyond the post-campaign soul-searching and political reshuffling,
problems of poverty, migration, drug addiction and criminal violence will
remain burning issues in the immediate future. On the issue of criminal
violence, Governor-elect Osuna pledged to draft a new public safety plan
and request "the intervention of the army when necessary."
Osuna's victory means that the PAN, which wrested control of the
governor's office from the PRI in the historic 1989 election, will
complete a 24-year reign of power in Baja California when Osuna's term
ends in 2013. In Mexican political terms, the PAN's Baja California
dynasty is only comparable in longevity to the decades-long rule of the
PRI or the reign of dictator Porfirio Diaz in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Sources: Proceso/Apro, August 7 and 8, 2007. Articles by Jose Gil Olmos
and Rosalia Vergara. El Sur, August 20, 2007. Article by Juan Angulo
Osorio. La Jornada, August 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 17, 2007. Articles by
Antonio Heras, Alonso Urrutia, Jaime Martinez Veloz, and editorial staff.
El Universal, August 1, 7, 8, 11, 13, 19, 21, 2007. Articles by Rosa
Maria Mendez Fierros, Marcelo Beyliss, Jorge Zepeda Patterson, and
editorial staff. El Diario de Juarez, August 6, 2007. San Francisco
Chronicle, August 5, 2007. Article by Gunther Hamm. Univision, July 31,
2007.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
My smidgen of a claim to fame is that I have had so many really good friends. By Bernie Swaim December 2007
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rpleger
Super Nomad
Posts: 1087
Registered: 3-12-2005
Location: H. Mulegé, BCS
Member Is Offline
Mood: Was good.
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Thanks Bernie
Richard on the Hill
*ABROAD*, adj. At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to
be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
-- Ambrose Bierce, _The Enlarged Devil\'s Dictionary_
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gnukid
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4411
Registered: 7-2-2006
Member Is Offline
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All good news! yay!
With an increasingly educated populace and improving economy, the future is even brighter for Baja Sur.
Gracias a las Maestras! Vamonos a limpiar el Norte.
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