Saturday, March 7, 2009

Vicente the Terrible

Supporting my comments on Mexico's lack of love for Vicente Fox yesterday, here's Emilio Rabasa Gamboa from Thursday:
Unfortunately, these days neither of these parties manages to preserve its original raison d’etre. The PRI finds itself submerged in the famous "iron law of the oligarchy" (Robert Michels), according to which a directive elite considers itself indispensable controls the party machinery, making true internal democracy impossible. The PRI stopped being a means for achieving the end of a social purposes of the Revolution of 1910, from the moment the interests of the elites of that party became the ends of the party itself...That explans the balance of 50 percent poverty that it left when it lost the presidency. For its part, the PAN, with the ineptitude and abuses of Fox, showed its anti-democratic face.
It's striking how casually Rabasa hangs the anti-democratic tag on Fox. Although I'm no huge fan of Fox, I think it's unfair, but the fact that Rabasa feels comfortable launching the broadside without any supporting info shows how deeply ingrained into Mexico's political culture the narrative of "Fox the pseudo-fascist" truly is. 

The point of the column was that the PAN and PRI have each fallen short of their overarching missions as a party, and that a modern, non-messianic left (his characterization, basically) should be able to capture a large segment of the vote. I couldn't agree more, and I'm looking forward to seeing his thoughts on how such a party could develop in next week's column. 

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