Monday, April 13, 2009

Assessing the PAN's Strategy

Consulta Mitofksy's Roy Campos sees the PAN strategy as three headed: 1) Make it a contest between itself and one chief adversary (the PRI), just as it did in 2006 (with AMLO's PRD) and 2000 (PRI again) with great success; 2) Remove from the PRI the positive sheen it enjoys thanks to its two years of cooperation with Calderón; and 3) Avoid the economy, in favor of security, the oil refinery, education, public health, whatever. 

Given that these three strategies appear to be based on a rather liberal dose of negative campaigning, it remains unclear where the PAN will go after the election. Even if it succeeds beyond anyone's wildest dreams and snags 251 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (which it won't), the Senate will still be majority opposition. After a scorched-earth electoral process, who will be willing to cooperate with the PAN? 

That seems to be precisely the worry that Campos had in mind in his penultimate paragraph:
The risk of the preceding strategy is polarizing the country once more, it's a risk that the PAN seems willing to run to avoid the growth of the PRI; let's remember that beyond the era of Germán Martínez at the head of his party, it hasn't been particularly successful, so there is a lot at stake in July; a failure would be a very grave burden for the future, that's why it's not holding back, it's not thinking about the difficulties that governing with a majority-opposition legislature would later represent...

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