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Campaign Countdown amid Financial Jitters
By Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY- The million-dollar campaigns for the Mexican presidency come to a close Wednesday, four days before elections that could alter the nation's history, in an environment fraught with financial market tensions.
The media replete with campaign ads, political rallies and candidate declarations will end June 28 so that the 58.8 million registered voters, of whom some 40 million are expected to cast a ballot, have time to reflect before making their decision on July 2, in accordance with Mexico's electoral laws.
This Sunday, from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm local time, the electorate will choose its new president from a field of five candidates. The winner will be known by 3:00 or 4:00 am on Monday, says the now independently run Federal Electoral Institute (IFE).
The front-runners are Francisco Labastida, of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Vicente Fox, of the Alliance for Change, a coalition of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the Green Ecologist Party. The latest polls show the two candidates running neck-and-neck.
But a surprise showing by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, candidate for the centre-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), has not been completely ruled out, according to political observers.
Cárdenas, running a distant third, has maintained a presence throughout the campaign by serving as an outspoken moral compass for the process.
After 71 years of PRI presidents, this Sunday's elections - said to be the most open, transparent and competitive ever in Mexico - promise to be a moment of historic change.
The charismatic Fox, who has served as governor the central state of Guanajuato and regional president of Coca-Cola, is the first opposition candidate to run at a virtual tie with the PRI candidate in public opinion polls in the days just prior to elections.
There is a real possibility that the long-governing PRI could lose. But even if the PRI wins, Mexican politics will never be the same, say analysts, because the opposition has established itself as a stronger force than ever.
The years have ended, perhaps forever, when the PRI, the longest governing party in the world, can interfere and involve itself in any and every issue in the country.
But given the uncertainty of who will win, intensified by charges from the opposition that the PRI has engaged in coercion and vote- buying in the run-up to the elections, the financial community is reacting with nervousness.
The Mexican peso, floated on the open market, fell eight percent in relation to the dollar just since June 1.
Since April, an estimated one to two billion dollars in foreign capital have fled the country, but it is a total experts say has little relevance as the government reserves stand at 30 billion dollars.
On July 2, the Mexican electorate will also choose three governors, the federal Congress and 10 complete state legislatures, 419 mayors and, for the first time, Mexico City residents will elect delegates to represent each of the 16 newly created urban districts.
The new legislators are to take office September 1, while the president and governors will wait until December to be inaugurated.
During the six months of the official electoral campaign, which focused primarily on the presidential race, the Mexican people were bombarded with political advertising - though they saw a greater balance in radio and TV time distributed among the PRI and opposition parties than in previous election years.
The opening of the communications media - previously closely linked to the PRI -, and the long process to create an IFE independent of the government's Executive have laid the groundwork to ensure these elections are the cleanest in Mexican history, agree most of the nation's political parties.
The local firm Consultores Internacionales estimates that 2.5 billion dollars have been spent on the campaigns and election preparations. The media played an important role in pushing up that total by raising their advertising prices for campaign publicity.
Televisa, the country's leading television network, charged more than 16,000 dollars for every 20 seconds spot during prime TV viewing hours.
Thanks to financing from the IFE - some 300 million dollars - the political parties could cover part of those costs. The three major presidential candidates and their parties captured most of the media's broadcast time and print space dedicated to the campaign.
Because these three parties received the most votes in previous elections, the IFE granted them 70 percent of the total funding, but even more money came from the private sector, though it is still unknown exactly how much.
Following the elections that brought current president Ernesto Zedillo to office in 1994, the major political parties acknowledged they had received three to five times more funding from private sources than public.
We have perhaps the most expensive electoral system in the world, and we have set up the strictest safeguards against fraud,'' pointed out electoral law expert Sergio Sarmiento.
The voting credential of each voting-age citizen and the electoral list includes a photograph of the voter.
Ballot tallying is to be performed with the participation of delegates from all political parties, and there are several layers of computer safeguards to prevent alteration of the data during electronic transmission.
In addition, the IFE has accredited 860 foreign observers from 57 countries, nearly half of the individuals coming from the United States.
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Has the world lived up to its 1996 commitments..?
Solidarity 2000 starting 17th of June!
MS's big summer event Solidarity 2000 will start very soon now, with a week-long variety of debates and arrangements. The activities range from encounters between young people from Balkan, Africa and Central America to big conferences on the planet's social development and environment.
Judge by yourself:
The 1996 Copenhagen Social Summit final report in English, French and Spanish.