The charade witnessed this weekend, when rather than actually running in any kind of primary or internal party vote, Eruviel Ávila was simply "declared" the PRI's candidate in Mexico State, was hardly just a one-time throwback to PRI's infamous dedazo process, where the outgoing governor/president/etc would simply designate his next successor as the designate of the party. In Nayarit, the exact same thing happened: Here, Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, mayor of the capital Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, was yesterday pronounced a "candidate of unity" by the PRI to be the next governor of the state.
Yet this is hardly limited to the PRI: As columist Denise Maerker pointed out in today's El Universal, PAN, in declaring that its candidate for Mexico State governor, alliance with PRD or no alliance, would be Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, is replicating the very practice.
And lest we forget: The backers of Alejandro Encinas in the PRD are calling for the very same thing, to simply drop any internal process due to prominent advantages of Encinas - poll numbers, name recognition etc. Now, Encinas may very well be the "natural" candidate of the PRD, and the only one with a minimal chance of winning the Mexico State election. Yet for the PRD's sake - a party for whom democratization has been the emblem since its inception - I truly hope the party will not fall into the temptation of simply dropping the primary or any semblance of open selection process, and in turn simply declare Encinas its "unity candidate" as well. If it does, it will truly add to the old saying that in Mexico, everyone carries a little priista inside of them.
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