Mexico's Former Ruling Party Stumbles on the Road Back to Power

[Judi Lynn]

Mexico's Former Ruling Party Stumbles on the Road Back to Power
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: February 26, 2006
CHIHUAHUA, Mexico — A year ago, the party machine that ruled Mexico for seven decades appeared poised for a comeback. It had won a series of important city and state elections, frustrated President Vicente Fox's legislation in Congress and still boasted the best get-out-the-vote operation in Mexico.



Felipe Courzo/Reuters

Roberto Madrazo, the Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate for president, hopes the party's loyal supporters will prove the polls wrong.

But today, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is deeply divided after a bloody, internal fight for the presidential nomination. Most polls show that the chosen candidate, Roberto Madrazo, the former governor of Tabasco and the party boss who engineered recent victories, appears to be floundering in third place in a three-way race.

His public image is so negative that he has started using only his first name in the headlines of campaign posters and pamphlets, his aides said, to try to warm up his image and distance himself from the taint of his last name.
(snip)

Founded during the Mexican Revolution in the early part of the last century, the PRI started out as a progressive party but became corrupt. Leaders got rich in office. Critics were silenced. Dirty election tactics kept the party in power. In its heyday, it was known as a perfect dictatorship in democratic clothing, each president handing power to his handpicked successor.

Mr. Madrazo, 53, has been a polarizing figure in the party, with a reputation as a shark in back-room dealings. His critics say he is a classic old-fashioned Mexican politician close to the party's old guard, willing to menace enemies, buy friends and resort to gifts to get the party faithful to the polls.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/americas/26mexico.html



Roberto Madrazo

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. As my mom put it

there is nobody worth voting for with the PRI (or anybody else for that matter) Been too damn busy payinhg attention to our politics, and no longer pay attention to those politics, never mind what happens at the presidential election will affect all of us... especially on the border areas

[Judi Lynn]

2. If Mexico elects a President this year who is less Bush's lackey,

_Bush's influence in this hemisphere will be substantially weakened. He'll work like the devil through propaganda, money through NED, USAID, etc., sabotage through covert ops, along the same patterns already established by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan.

His "my way or the highway" appears to extend to every single country on earth. Republicans have always struggled with the delusion it's their right to control every country in this hemisphere. I think they'd gladly kill everyone who gets in their way. Republican respect for democracy is entirely superficial.