Mexico Election Results Show Growing Distance Between Politicians and People

[Joanne98]

Low Voter Turn Out, and Lack of Faith in the Nation's Political Parties Benefits the PRI; Abstention Reached 55 Percent and Another 5 Percent Voted - voto nulo


By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
July 7, 2009

The morning after the national elections for representatives to the Mexican congress along with a handful of state governors, I went up to the neighborhood newsstand where papers hang with clothespins like laundry in the sunshine. On the left, Noticias headlined “Abstentions won more than the parties”, while the right/government papers proclaimed “The PRI wins”.

Both headlines are true. Outside each polling place tallies are posted, with signatures of the poll-officials who did the counting. The small polling station across from the newsstand registered a total of 638 votes, and of those, 56 were for the voto nulo (none of the above) and 36 for independent write-in candidates. The total of 92 represents 14.4% of votes cast. The National Action Party (PAN, in its Spanish initials),winners (at this one voting place) received a total of 153, while the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI , got 139. This neighborhood is not affluent, neither is it brutally impoverished.

The big winner, according to the Federal Election Institute (IFE in its Spanish initials), in the eleven districts of Oaxaca, was the PRI; it also won big all across the nation. The resurgence of the PRI signifies, according to some analysts, the death knell for the PAN, which under Calderon’s leadership has ruled over a catastrophic drug war, a large loss of jobs, and a decline in gross national product. For Oaxaca, a PRI win signifies “more of the same only worse.”

According to columnist Federico Arreola:


“The Pan propaganda asked the people, with some insistence, to vote for the party of Felipe Calderón, the “president” who is really fighting the narcos, in this way turning back the delinquents, that is to say, the PRI. This Sunday we learned that the people trust the delinquents more than the laughable Eliot Ness of Los Pinos. Therefore, if the citizens of México voted mostly for the lifelong bandits it is undoubtedly due to the desperation provoked by the worst government in memory.”

Participation of voters nationally reached 44.71%; abstention reached 55.29 %. That figure represents about 43 million people who didn’t show up to vote. The PRI moves up to strongest, the PAN drops to second place, the PRD is third, the Workers Party (PT) is fourth and the fifth force is the voto nulo. The Socialist Workers Party has lost its formal recognition due to its weak showing. The Green Party, in Mexico an arm of the PAN, picked up the votes which the PAN apparently lost. PT and Convergencia received enough votes to keep their registration, so they can compete in the presidential elections of 2012.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue58/article3665.html

[DJ13]

1. Around the world people are starting to see that politicians only care about the wealthy

If the politicians are smart they might want to start doing things to help the other 99% of the people before the mobs start forming outside their estates demanding their heads.

Just a thought.

[RandomThoughts]

2. It hasn't been shown on the US news at all.

But I have seen some documentaries although bias, they show 10,000s in protest in Oaxaca from a few years ago. It started as a teachers strike, and escalated to nighttime raids into neighborhoods by security forces.

So there is more to the Mexico story then what we hear in the news.

[subcomhd]

3. Pretty decent article, but...

The real resurgence of the dreaded PRI can best be attributed to (in addition to PAN mismanagement) the collapse of the left-of-center PRD. After the last presidential election - which they probably had stolen from them- the PRDistas collapsed into intra-party bickering and have failed to present a unified progressive front.