Boz wonders if Mexico's next president will come from outside the three major parties:
This leads to a question: What are the chances of a presidential candidate coming from outside these three parties in 2012? Looking at recent polls, there is definitely space for someone to run from outside the current party structure.
Putting to one side the legal obstacles that would face anyone seeking to mount a fourth-party challenge (which, as Jorge Castañeda can attest, are all-but-insurmountable for the time being), I just can't see it happening. First of all, as much as Mexicans dislike the three major political parties (they are consistently among the
least respected institutions according to surveys of the Mexican public), they haven't shown much love for any of the smaller parties. Furthermore, the PAN, PRI, and PRD may be hated, but they aren't weak; in this sense, the Mexican parties are much more like their North American counterparts than the historically weak parties in South America. And much as some Mexican
commentators like to dispel the notion, they do offer a real governing choice. Despite
high abstention rates and
persistent corruption in every major party, the gigantic vacuum of ideological legitimacy in the ruling class that allowed, say, Uribe to swoop in is absent in Mexico.
Then again, this is a pretty good example of a black swan scenario, wherein an event seems impossible until it actually happens, at which point we have to remind ourselves that unlikely or unprecedented doesn't mean impossible. I can't think of any obvious candidate (except for maybe someone like Alejandro Martí, who has an enviable combination of wealth, fame, and moral stature) who could pose a serious challenge to Enrique Peña Nieto or Marcelo Ebrard, but of course it would have to be someone out of left field.
6 comments:
México donde lo impossible es posible...y lo posible es imposible.
Yeah that about sums it up. I should no better than to dismiss anything.
All great points. Thanks.
Some of you may have noticed that I wrote "no" when I obviously meant to write "know". This is embarrassing, and has happened to me more and more as I have lived in Mexico; my ability to distinguish homophones without thinking about it has plummeted. So I regularly write "hear" instead of "here", "horde" instead of "hoard", et cetera. Has something like this ever happened to anyone else, or is this early senility?
Another important factor is the Mexican media. There are a number of countries that have requirements that make it quite difficult for independent candidates, but Mexico has the added quirk of the TV duopoly. This can go both ways: If someone with the last name "Azcarraga" wanted to shake things up, he/she would have a pretty powerful tool. But more likely, the media landscape will be another factor that an independent candidate will have to overcome. After all, the big 3 parties will continue to dominate congress for some time, and that's where the regulatory threat to the media status quo comes in.
I was thinking the same thing about Azcarraga. With the caveat that this is just silly speculation, el Tigrillo takes care of his public image, he's young, he's hugely rich. I can't imagine Mexico would elect a monopolist (well, duopolist), but maybe in 15 or 20 years if the TV market was opened up.
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