PRI Accepts “Vote for Vote” Recount

July 7, 2010

Representatives of the Partido Revolucionario Intitucional (PRI) agreed to allow electoral votes cast in this past Sunday’s gubernatorial elections in the state of Veracruz to be opened and counted one by one to confirm that their candidate, Javier Duarte de Ochoa, won the election outright.

Opposition coalition “Viva Veracruz” continues to claim that their candidate, Miguel Angel Yunes Linares, was a victim of electoral fraud and requested the recount.  The PRI agreed to the recount on the condition that the losing candidate no longer refer to themselves as the “legitimate governor.”

Read More

1 comments Login or register to post comments Permalink

Major Political Reforms Proposed in Mexico

December 16, 2009

In the most dramatic proposal for political reform in decades, Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced yesterday a 10-point plan aimed at revamping Mexico’s political system. Among the many reforms, the proposal would allow independent candidates to run for office and relax term-limit rules for legislators, allowing lawmakers and mayors to hold office for up to 12 years.

The legislation would also reduce the number of seats in the chamber of deputies by 20 percent to 400 seats, and reduce the number of senators from 128 to 96. Calderón also included a provision that would require, for the first time, a runoff election in presidential races in which no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of total votes cast. If passed, the reforms would dramatically alter Mexican politics. According to Calderón, “the idea is to give citizens more power, to give them the capacity to shape public life and to strengthen our democracy.”

Reactions to the proposal have been mixed. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) expressed its approval for most of the provisions, but refuted the need for runoffs in presidential races. The Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) rejected the proposal altogether. Gustavo Madero, leader of the Senate’s National Action Party (PAN) party, spoke highly of the proposed reforms, saying they present an opportunity to “leave behind formulas originated in the days of the monolithic PRI.”

Congress will officially debate the proposal in 2010.

0 comments Login or register to post comments Permalink

Mexico's Mid-term Elections: the Political and Policy

June 22, 2009

Stolen elections and ballot-box stuffing became such the norm in Mexico under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) that observers used to say that even the dead rise and vote on election day. In the mid-term legislative elections on July 5, this time it may be the once-thought moribund PRI that rises from the dead. A newly resurgent PRI in Mexico’s bicameral congress will have consequences for the policy agenda (mostly positive) of President Felipe Calderón and his Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and signal the decline of the leftist Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD)—under its current leadership, maybe not such a bad thing). 

At stake in these elections are 128 seats in the Mexican Senate and all 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. If polls are to be believed, these elections may dramatically shrink the seats that the PRD gained in the 2006 elections. At the time, many believed this would be the trend, as Mexico appeared cleaved between the Right (PAN) and the Left (PRD). In the 2006 elections, the PRD scored 37 of the one-third-open Senate seats, compared to 57 for the PAN and 32 for the PRI.  Most remarkable was that only six years earlier in the 2000 presidential/legislative elections the PRD only managed 17. In the lower-house elections in 2006, Mexico’s standard bearer for the Left, the PRD, did even better scoring 106 seats in the chamber, exceeding the 66 it won in 2000. 

Read More

2 comments Login or register to post comments Permalink