Today, Beatriz Paredes Rangel will officially step down as national leader of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), and Humberto Moreira, governor-on-leave-of-absence from Coahuila, will take her place.
In this regard, Joaquín López-Dóriga has a very useful run-down of her achievements, as well as failures. Paredes took power March 4, 2007 (NOT 2008, as López-Dóriga erroneously states). Since then:
* In the 2009 federal elections, PRI won 188 of 300 single-member districts, which is a higher achievement than in 2003, 2000, and even 1997 (though note PRI still does not have a majority on its own - it lost its 2/3 majority in 1988, and simple majority in 1997)
* In 2009, PRI lost Sonora for the first time (an upset mainly due to the ABC child care scandal), yet won the five others at stake, including recovering San Luis Potosí and Querétaro from PAN.
* In 2010, PRI famously lost Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa, yet won the nine other states at sake, including recovering Tlaxcala and Aguascalientes from PAN and Zacatecas from the PRD.
* In 2011, the PRI lost both gubernatorial elections so far: Guerrero remained with the PRD, while in Baja California Sur, PAN defeated the PRD.
From 2008, PRI under Paredes won 14 governorships - Nuevo León, Colima, Campeche, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, Durango, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas - and lost six: Sonora, Sinaloa, Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero and Baja California Sur.
That means, as López-Dóriga calculates, that PRI had 18 states in 2008, PAN 8, and PRD 8, while today it has 19 states, PAN 5, PRD 5, and the PAN-PRD alliances 3.
(he doesn't include 2007, the year Paredes became president; then, PRI won Yucatán from PAN, while PRD maintained Michoacán)
How much of it can be attributed to Paredes? According to her collaborators, she was instrumental in choosing the gubernatorial candidates, and has certainly worked hard to restructure and reposition the PRI as a possible winning party in 2012. Yet the most recent defeats this year in Guerrero and Baja California Sur comprise a strong psychological blow to the "steamroller" image the PRI had obtained particularly after the 2009 federal election, as do of course the 2009 losses of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa, states where the PRI had never relinquished power.
The party, moreover, remains highly programatically and ideologically diffuse, wracked with personality clashes and divisions, and, to be sure, as vertical and lacking in any semblance of internal democracy: The party is as authoritarian as ever.
Now it is up to Humberto Moreira to finally position the PRI ahead of the 2012 presidential contest. The PRI is a very clear favorite in Coahuila, but in Nayarit the PRD, possibly with PAN, stands a very good chance of winning, and of course in Mexico State, things are still very much in the open, though a non-PRI victory is extremely unlikely unless PRD-PAN will present a common candidate.
It will be an exciting electoral spring.
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