September 08, 2006
View From Lodi, CA: California’s Most Important
2006 Election—Calderon Edges Lopez Obrador in Mexico
By Joe Guzzardi
For
California voters, the most important 2006 election
will not be the Senate race between incumbent Democrat
Dianne Feinstein and her Republican challenger Dick
Mountjoy.
Nor will it be the gubernatorial contest between Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Phil Angelides.
And none of the 53 Congressional races is likely to have
the impact on California that the
recently-concluded Mexican presidential race
where
Felipe Calderon was officially declared the winner
over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will have.
Let’s be candid. Whether Feinstein, Mountjoy,
Schwarzenegger, Angelides or Democrats or Republicans
prevail in Congress come November, federal and state
government will slog on with the painful sameness that
marks it year after year.
But imagine the good that might come if president-elect
Calderon succeeds.
Right now, Mexico is a mess and getting worse by the
day.
A
recent study by the
School of Graduates in Public Administration at the
Monterrey Institute of Technology shows that
in
Mexico the average income received by the
population’s poorest 10 percent is under 2 percent,
while the
wealthiest 10 percent receives 40 percent of
national income. This awful statistic despite the fact
that Mexico’s economy is among the world’s fifteen
largest.
The
same analysis found that the average education of the
poorest 10 percent of Mexicans barely reaches 4 years,
and for the highest 10 percent, 12 years.
An
expert in Mexican affairs, Hector Samuel Peña,
wrote for the website
MaquilaPortal.com that this continued income and
educational disparity
poses multiple risks for Mexico’s future.
In the
July 2nd election that took two months to
produce a winner, 63 percent of the Mexican population
either didn’t vote or did not support Calderon.
Lopez
Obrador, the former Mayor of Mexico City and a strong
leftist candidate who narrowly lost to Calderon, took to
the streets to angrily demonstrate against what he
called massive electoral fraud.
And
even though the results have
now been officially sanctioned by Mexico’s
highest electoral court, Lopez Obrador promises to
continue to orchestrate his demonstrations that have
paralyzed key parts of Mexico City for two months.
The question is whether
Mexican democracy can function against such a
chaotic backdrop.
The
start for Calderon is rocky.
In the
week leading up to the September annual national
presidential address, the outgoing
Vicente Fox was warned that opposition was mounting
that would make it impossible for him to deliver his
speech publicly.
To
protect against that eventuality, Fox ordered his
government to take extraordinary care to surround
Congress with barricades, military vehicles and
anti-riot police.
In the
end though, the opposition prevailed. Fox, although he
arrived safely at Congress, was prevented from
delivering his remarks in person and was reduced to
broadcasting a videotaped version.
The
transition from Fox to Calderon is, so far, a grim
preview of what might happen in
Mexico.
Conditions in Latin American countries that include
acute poverty, civil unrest and a
desperate population usually end, at best, in an
inability to govern effectively and, at worst, in coups,
violence or
civil war.
Calderon, who has Masters’ degrees in economics from the
University of Mexico and public policy from
Harvard University, promises to create more jobs in
Mexico, build
new refineries, expand health care, keep his
administration free of corruption and create job and
educational opportunities for the poor.
These campaign
pledges no doubt sound familiar. And they are. All three
of
Mexico’s last presidents,
Fox,
Ernesto Zedillo and
Carlos Salinas de Gotari, made them but failed to
deliver.
If
Mexico is somehow able to come to grips with
itself—a long shot given its century-old history of
corrupt government—then the country has a chance to
survive.
But if Calderon
proves as inept as his predecessors and allows his
government to fall into
anarchy,
California will look more attractive than ever to
displaced Mexicans.
Then what will we
do?
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English
at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly
column since 1988. It currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
