Mexico: Sitting Down Together?
Politicians from the three political parties in Mexico have been sitting down together in order to come to some truly historical agreements!
In the past eight months Mexico’s congress has passed three important changes to it’s constitution: A constitutional change to curb the powerful union of it’s public school teachers, a legal reform to strip public officials of immunity from criminal prosecution and a telecommunications bill that sharply limits the monopoly that the billionaire Carlos Slim has over the
country’s largest telephone company.
President Enrique Pena Nieto also delivered a proposal to open Mexico’s closed, state owned energy market to private companies.
All three political parties have begun discussing the creation of a national election agency which would supervise all federal, state and local elections.
Mexico’s stock index has risen 5% in the last 12 months and the peso has strengthened 3.5% against the dollar, while at the same time Brazil’s leading stock market index fel 13% and the currency sank 14%
Mexico’s politics were stuck long enough for the country to drift dangerously. The public was shocked at how week the state had become.
Mexico has been ruled with an iron fist for over 75 years (actually longer) if we look at how the Aztec emperors and the Spanish colonial viceroys ruled.
All of this shifted, although in my opinion it has not ended, with the rise of a sort of democracy in the 1990’s
After a 30 year dictatorship was toppled, Mexico was ruled by the only existing political party, the PRI, until it finally fell out of favor. This was due to massive corruption within the party and the use of the country’s oil reserves to insure the party would stay in power.
and it did, for 73 years! It was what was called a soft dictatorship.
It was during the 12 year absence of the PRI party, that it was even posible for three political parties to be created.
Now the PRI is back, but as usual, the people expect that the outcome of the elections was fraudulent. In any case Mexico has a new president and the new president is from the winning PRI party.
In my opinion if the PRI wants to continue in power, it will have to make vast changes in the way the country is governed.
The PRI historically ruled the country with an iron clad centralized government which was full of corruption and lies, until finally this corruption went so far over the top,that it became very difficult to hide; the
censorship was broken in the press and the public began to take notice.
I lived in Mexico for 32 years and saw the facade slowly crumble but that is another story, and the topic of perhaps another blog.
The good news is that change is in the air and the PRI party is really going to have to work hard to please the Mexican people if it wants to stay in power.
