While the rest of the nation is on Easter week vacations, Mexican political parties are extremely busy paving the trek and selecting “the right candidate” in each of the upcoming June 5 elections for governor in 12 different states.
Analysts are divided as to the odds for each of the parties, but they are making their wagers anyway.
One says that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will win three states, the National Action Party (PAN) one, and eight are up for grabs among the different alliances among political parties.
Another one claims the PAN-Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) alliance in the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Durango and Zacatecas look invincible in those six states and that the alliance made among PRI, Green Party (PVEM) and National Alliance (Panal) stands a chance of coming off victor in the remaining six states.
One thing that is for sure is that not all states mean the same in terms of size and income. Of the 12 states at stake the big ones, both in terms of size and wealth, are Veracruz, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo, with Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico coast being the cherry on the cake.
There are little states too that may or may not mean a significant tenure for any of the 10 parties involved in the fray, but in the end, they too count in the final political booty tally. They are Tlaxcala in the center and Zacatecas in northern Mexico. Both are impoverished states that add little money to the federation. In fact, they receive more in aid than they pay in taxes, but again, their votes matter.
Among those not yet mentioned are extremely important industrialized states such Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Puebla and Sinaloa where winning the election is of utmost importance to all contenders.
Forecasters wager that for sure at least the state of Puebla will go to PAN as the state has been under the command of this party and will not let go of it.
Hidalgo, they claim, will go to PRI as the chosen candidate by the once “invincible” PRI, Omar Fayad, looks invincible. Or that’s what panegyrists claim.
One truth for all states is not so much the well-greased organizations pushing the candidacy of their chosen local leader works, but at a state level the savvy, sympathy and “honesty” of each candidate stands the test of the pudding, mainly in terms of honesty as as it usually turns out, the most handsome (and prettiest, women are running too) of candidates turn out in the end to be the most corrupt.
On the other hand, party alliances do matter. This time the most noteworthy one is that between unlikely bed fellows PAN and PRD.
Ideologically, they are totally incompatible as PAN is a right-wing Catholic organization while PRD is a leftist atheist group.
Yet alliances in Mexico are not a matter of belief or ideology, but of political interest. What the PAN-PRD alliance is looking for is to weaken mainly the currently ruling PRI, a party considered the main enemy of Mexican democracy.
This year the PAN-PRD coalition is going together in several states (noticeably Veracruz, Puebla and Oaxaca) and they hold a great possibility of containing PRI even with its two cronies and “parasite” parties PVEM and PANAL.
Though PRI is running on a democratic platform in this coming election, its past as a dictatorial and despotic party just doesn’t go away, much less now that its president is none other than the “perfect dictator” Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a man infamous for having hidden the secrets of the 1994 PRI assassination of one of their owl PRI stalwarts, Luis Donaldo Colosio.
Beltrones forever? Hell no, other political parties shout!
But nowadays PAN-PRD managed to stage five alliances against Beltrones and the PRI-PVEM-PANAL coalition, the two political movements that will have the upper hand in the June 5 elections.
By the way, Mexican analysts just love to forecast what will happen for the 2018 presidential election. The truth is that Mexico holds state elections every year around June or July and for sure the 2018 elections for president, senators and deputies will be defined after the small, but significant, 2017 governors’ election.
Till then, it will all be sheer guessing. But for now, the race is on for June 5.
Please notice that I did not give the names of potential candidates. But that’s to keep you from eating – verbatim – a soup of letters, but in the future we will cover the elections in each of the states in contention.