Gwynne Dyer: Why Enrique Peña Nieto will win the Mexican presidential election

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      There’s no point in talking about who’s going to win the Mexican presidential election on July 1. Enrique Peña Nieto is going to win it. What’s more interesting is why he’s going to win it.

      Peña Nieto, the candidate of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is a charming and extremely good-looking non-entity. He speaks no foreign language, has travelled little abroad, and is so ignorant that, when asked on live television what three books had influenced him most, he struggled to name any books at all. Finally, he came up with two: the Bible, and a Jeffrey Archer pot-boiler.

      He has spent his entire life in politics, and his timing was good. In 1990 he began working in various local branches of the PRI, the ruling single party that dominated every aspect of Mexican life, and if democracy had not come to Mexico it would probably have taken him a long time to rise to the top. However, 12 years ago, when he was only 34, the PRI lost power after 70 years in office.

      The “dinosaurs” who ran the party machine realized that they needed a new approach in the newly democratic environment, and fresh young faces like Peña Nieto’s were just what they needed out front. In PRI’s long march back to acceptability he was one of the standard-bearers, winning the governorship of the State of Mexico (the region surrounding the capital) in 2005.

      The standard he bore did not have any stirring political slogan on it, however. Peña Nieto’s entire political pitch, then and subsequently, consisted of promising “projects”—a new road here, a hospital there—to every identifiable group in the electorate. That was all any PRI candidate could do, really, because the party had no serious ideological pretensions.

      Sandwiched between explicitly ideological rivals to the right and left, the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the socialist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), all the old-fashioned PRI had to offer was patronage and the pork barrel: poverty politics. That should have condemned it to a long exile from power, because Mexico has been doing very well economically under the PAN governments that have run the country since 2000.

      Mexico is the rising star among Latin American economies, with an annual growth rate that now exceeds that of Brazil. And in an economy with low inflation and manageable debt, real incomes have risen as well.

      Per capita income in Mexico is now as much as 50 percent higher than Brazil’s. So if Brazilian voters were so happy with the results of President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s eight years in power that they gratefully elected his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, to the presidency in 2010, why have PAN’s 12 years of economic success not entitled it to re-election too?

      The answer is simple: President Felipe Calderón’s declaration of war on Mexico’s drug cartels in 2006 has embroiled the country in a bloodbath that blinds both foreigners and its own citizens to the remarkable progress that is being made on most other fronts. The at least 50,000 killed in the drug war over the past five years have persuaded Mexican citizens that the country is in an acute crisis.

      In fact, Mexico has a lower murder rate than Brazil or Colombia, and it is less than a third of Venezuela’s. However, the spectacular (and deliberate) savagery of the killings by the Mexican drug cartels has persuaded many Mexicans that they face an acute threat to their personal security, and they are not the least bit grateful to Felipe Calderón for unleashing this horror on the country.

      Back in the bad old days when the PRI ran everything, the cartels waged their internal wars discreetly, and they never attacked the forces of the state. There was an unwritten understanding that the government would not hinder their activities so long as they kept a low profile, except for an occasional big drug bust to keep the Americans happy.

      In return, the cartels paid off PRI officials at every level and helped to perpetuate the party’s hold on power. It was a grubby arrangement, but not many people got killed and the public slept easily. Then came PAN, Calderón, and the war. A significant section of the public, rightly or wrongly, now believes that the PRI can make the deals that are needed to restore the peace.

      It’s probably a bit more complicated than that, in reality. Peña Nieto says nothing about it in public, but he has hired Oscar Naranjo, the Colombian police chief who played a major role in “decommissioning” that country’s cocaine syndicates, as his main security adviser. The impression that conveys to the voters (quite intentionally) is that as president he will make peace with the cartels, not wage a hopeless war against them.

      Did Peña Nieto think this up by himself? Probably not. Are the “dinosaurs” who still control the PRI behind the scenes capable of coming up with it? Of course they are; they once did business with the ancestors of the current drug lords.

      And would this be such a terrible thing for Mexico? Well, so long as the United States will not permit the legalization and nationalization of the drug trade, it’s probably Mexico’s best remaining alternative.

      Comments

      5 Comments

      HellSlayerAndy

      Jun 27, 2012 at 12:13pm

      "What’s more interesting is why he’s going to win it. "

      Most observers would suggest the usual well-documented election fraud that put PRI in charge of Mexico for most of the 20th century, Mr. Dyer?

      ; the least of this fraud was "make the deals" with Televisa, by far the largest mass media company in Mexico, to run an endless smear against his rivals under the cutout called Hancock Project. Even Obama campaign 2008 media contractor Blue State Digital was involved.

      Also putting aside the accusations that several high ranking PRI officials have extensive links to the crime cartels ('grubby arrangement'?), how could this be correct:
      "The impression that conveys to the voters (quite intentionally) is that as president he will make peace with the cartels, not wage a hopeless war against them. "
      How does Dyer get this when Nieto and Naranjo have pledged an election on getting tough with the cartels, working more closely with US drug enforcement and proposing the Colombia model which includes stepped up US military involvement?

      Is Dyer part of the Handcock project? The Guardian newspaper ran an exclusive on the leaked contracts three weeks ago and Dyer works out of London?

      No way he wouldn't have known about that or even the Wikileaks documents where even the US State department discussed this connection in a cable report called "A look at Mexico State, Potemkin village style".

      Quoting from it:
      Nieto "has launched significant public works projects in areas targeted for votes, and analysts and PRI party leaders alike have repeatedly expressed to [US political officers] their belief that he is paying media outlets under the table for favourable news coverage, as well as potentially financing pollsters to sway survey results".

      So even the US State department back in 2009 was suggesting the polls are being manipulated...and YET, Dyer treats those same polls as if they are a credible indication of voter preference without caveat? In fact in March there were considerable student protests regarding what has become common knowledge in Mexico regarding the Nieto-Televisa link?

      Yet Dyer mentions none of this preferring to whitewash Nieto as simply a 'fresh new start' candidate with an enviable track record in a party of 'dinosaurs'?
      A Creepier than usual column from Gwynne.
      Are student newspapers still running this guy's questionable commentaries?

      Mark Fornataro

      Jun 27, 2012 at 12:32pm

      Whatever the outcome of the election, the link here shows how deep the problems are-
      http://www.pulsamerica.co.uk/2011/05/11/ciudad-juarez-a-trip-into-mexico...
      And the author writes " I hear that all the cartel leaders live in El Paso. I hear they send their children to private schools there. I hear that the violence will end when the PRI wins the election in 2012. I hear it will never end."

      Joe Smith

      Jun 29, 2012 at 12:53pm

      I think Gwynne is being a bit unfair toward Enrique. I mean, I read books, but would have difficulty if asked on the spot, to recall three books that had influenced me the most.

      ErnestPayne

      Jul 31, 2012 at 7:07am

      The usual insightful commentary. I wonder how much of Mexico's status as a failed state can be traced back to the Spanish empire.

      ErnestPayne

      Aug 28, 2012 at 10:17am

      Fascinated by the sudden drop in drug cartel murders after the election. One wonders if the PRI encouraged the situation in order to return to power.