No Silver Lining

After running the list of the winners and the losers, Bajo Reserva's take on the election doesn't find much of a silver lining for the PAN and Germán Martínez:

But if anyone came out defeated it's the PAN. And more than the PAN, the strategy of their national president. He lost that which couldn't be lost. Germán Martínez arrives to the end of this election day with meager winnings for his party, and with very, very many broken dishes. How much will agreements with the primary power, the PRI, cost Felipe Calderón after Beatriz Paredes and many other leaders, wounded personally by Germán, don't want to see his face? How will Martínez keep himself in power before panista wings that he pushed to one side so as to install characters as fierce as they were electorally costly? Señor Martínez is in trouble. Serious trouble. Only the hand of the president can keep him in place; his achievements, we've now seen, cannot.

The political agenda of the country will be redefined. That will be one of the costs (benefits?) of this election. To start, the executive must cooperate with the opposition if he wants to advance. The president will have to justify what are key issues for him, such as combating drug trafficking, or his security measures. He will also have to submit his economic agenda to a dynamic in Congress that is unpromising. And the errors of the first portion of his government, which had a cost in 2009, will bite him during the coming portion. Many panistas think the PRI isn't an enemy. It knows how to negotiate...to its advantage. But the cost for the executive is undeniable. The reproach from the electorate is real.