Slightly Less Gloomy

Jorge Fernández Menéndez, after noting the PRI's capacity for "self-sabotage", speculates on the party's future: 

The PRI will have to bet on seeking a path to agreements that would even facilitate its hypothetical return to power. Already once, before 2000, the PAN opposed the fiscal and energy reforms with Zedillo for circumstantial reasons and, after those elections, it was the PRI that denied support to the Fox government for the same circumstantial reasons. The parties and the government can't repeat that error: nothing will be more important in the months ahead than reconfiguring the fiscal system and trying to crack the nut of the energy industry. The reforms passed by the present legislature have been demonstrated insufficient and they don't grant the state the necessary instruments to confront the crisis in which we are immersed. There must be fiscal and energy reforms now that the elections have just passed and when the horizon of 2012 is still relatively far away. After the first ordinary period of this legislature, things will inevitably begin to get complicated, among other reasons because the cuts in the budget for 2010 will affect everyone, governments, parties, and citizens. 

The PRI must confront that challenge with seriousness, understanding that what it doesn't do today will leave the country in worse conditions in regard to governability, under the hypothesis that it returns to power in 2012. The government and the PAN must know that, without those agreements, they won't be able to fully guarantee that same governability, although they think, erroneously, that the possibility of confrontation with the PRI can give them more opportunities in the next election...