- Vazquez Mota celebrates after winning the primary election to be the National Action Party’s candidate for president, in Mexico city. (Edgard Garrido/Courtesy Reuters).
I wrote a piece on Vázquez Mota and what it means for the Mexican election for Foreign Affairs entitled “Vázquez Mota and the 2012 Mexican Election”. In it I argue that she has the potential to upend the presidential race, but only if she can raise her profile and generate enthusiasm in the all important female vote (over half of the electorate). Here is an excerpt:
Last Sunday, Mexico’s incumbent National Action Party (PAN) chose its presidential candidate: Josefina Vázquez Mota, who won the party’s primary to become the first female presidential candidate from a major political party in Mexican history. But Vázquez Mota’s triumph was not a coup just because of her gender. She got the PAN nod (only party leaders, known as “militants,” actually vote in Mexican primaries), over President Felipe Calderón’s handpicked candidate, Ernesto Cordero. And Vázquez Mota’s victory was decisive — she took 55 percent of the vote to Cordero’s 38 percent. Despite their differences, President Calderón, her recent rivals, and the party quickly rallied behind her.
In the presidential election, which is set for July 1, Vázquez Mota will compete in a three-way race. The current front-runner is the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic former governor of the state of Mexico; he maintains a twenty point lead in national polls. Voters like him because of his good looks, his fairytale family history (his wife died, then he married a soap opera star), and his public works largesse when in office. He also benefits from the partisan support of 19 of Mexico’s 32 governors. Not only will those governors endorse him, but they will boost Peña Nieto’s campaign with their abundant resources, ensuring widespread local media coverage, packed campaign rallies, and strong get-out-the vote drives. And then there is Televisa, Mexico’s largest media company, which has virtually adopted Peña Nieto; their camera crews are always close by and quick to flatter him.
It is Vázquez Mota’s place on the ticket, though, that has the potential to upend Mexican politics. Unlike her two challengers, who are linked to the old guard and old boys’ network, as a woman, Vázquez Mota can claim to be the mantle of change. And she can make that claim even against her own party, which has ruled the country for 12 years, a time of mediocre economic growth and increasing drug-related violence. Of course, as the first female candidate, her election would mark a definitive break with the past. But she also brings substantial political experience as a former minister of education and of social development and, most recently, as head of her party in the lower house. She also proved her knack for campaigning in the PAN primary debates where she outshone her competitors with her clarity and charm.
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Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A boy from the "Insurgentes de la Paz" (Peace Insurgents) school receives lessons inside an old bus turned into a class room in the settlement of Pueblo Nuevo, Oaxaca (Courtesy Reuters).
It is campaign season in Mexico, and aside from security issues, front-runners Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD are focusing on poverty and inequality. Both criticize the past two PAN governments for not improving the lot of Mexico’s poor, and for perpetuating if not exacerbating an uneven playing field that benefits the few and not the many. In a recent campaign stop in the Southern state of Veracruz, Peña Nieto came down hard on the PAN, saying “[the PRI] knows what Mexico hasn’t achieved in the past decade. We haven’t forgotten that more people are poor, that we haven’t had the economic growth that creates jobs that the public demands.”
But recent data from the World Bank and Mexico’s own household survey call these claims into question. Over the past fifteen years, inequality has fallen consistently, and since 1996 Mexico’s Gini coefficient has dropped by nearly one percent each year (reaching pre-1980s crisis levels – 49.8 – in 2006). Poverty is also down slightly, as five million fewer people live on four dollars a day or less in 2010 than in 2005.
A number of factors are behind these trends. First, macroeconomic stability (even with slow growth) has been particularly beneficial for the poor, who, studies show, are hit the hardest by economic crises. Real wages also improved, due to a mix of broader education and increased worker productivity. Finally, social spending targeting the poor rose. Programs such as Oportunidades (started under President Zedillo as Progresa), give monthly stipends to low income households that keep their kids healthy and in school, and now reach nearly six million families.
Unfortunately, the world financial crisis of 2008 brought this progress to a standstill. In contrast to the rest of Latin America, Mexico has seen an uptick in extreme poverty in its wake, with more families dropping below the poverty line even as the economy recovered in 2010. The big question going forward is whether – and how – Mexico can get back to spreading the gains of strong growth more evenly among the larger population. To make this happen, the next president should learn from the lessons of the last fifteen plus years – and focus on improving education, expanding targeted social programs, and redistributing wealth more generally (for instance through a more progressive tax system). These policies already have and would continue to make a difference in the lives of the many Mexicans that still struggle to make ends meet.
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mexican Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto answers reporters' questions at the National Press Club in Washington (Molly Reilly/Courtesy Reuters).
It seems the campaign book so popular in the United States has headed south of the border. After a recent tour through Washington, DC, and New York, former governor and likely PRI presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto just released Mexico, the Great Hope. An efficient state for democracy with results.
Arguing that the successive PAN administrations have left the country worse for the wear, Peña Nieto lays out his vision for a government based on guaranteeing citizens’ basic rights (such as security), getting the economy growing at its full potential, and reaffirming Mexico’s leadership as an emerging power on the world stage. He calls for a number of economic reforms, including opening Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) to private investment (still maintaining state ownership), as well as widening the tax base and simplifying the tax code. On security, he favors a more comprehensive strategy geared first and foremost to reducing the violence.
Most of his positions are quite sensible. Mexico needs to (and is already starting to) focus on lowering the escalating levels of violence, as opposed to concentrating on taking down drug kingpins. Economically, opening up PEMEX would increase foreign investment and improve Mexico’s overall competitiveness, boosting jobs and growth in the process. Reforming the tax code would also go a long way to enhancing and diversifying government revenues and hopefully make it easier to start up businesses. But these two reforms are also politically difficult — having been on the legislative table for years now, and repeatedly stymied by Peña Nieto’s own party. If he wins, perhaps the former governor will be Mexico’s equivalent of a “Nixon in China” – able to change the dynamics precisely because of his party’s ties to PEMEX’s union – but that remains to be seen.
Much will also depend on the United States. For Mexico to reach its economic potential, the United States will have to grow as well, as the economies today are indelibly intertwined. A U.S. immigration reform – if it happens — also could change things for Mexico. For all its big vision, the book makes clear that there is much that needs to happen during the next presidential term in Mexico to fulfill this “great hope.”
Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
