To South Africa: Lessons From Mexico on How Breakaways Can Affect Single Party Dominance

One of the key questions posed by the formation of the Congress of the People in South Africa is what the likely consequences are going to be for African National Congress dominance. A short term answer will arrive soon enough when the results of the 2009 election are announced. Present indications are that the ANC’s majority will be dented, but the ruling party will probably not be defeated. But what of the longer term consequences?

Here it is useful to compare the experience of the ANC with that of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In the year 2000 the PRI lost the Mexican presidency, bringing to an end its 71 year long hold on power. This era of single party dominance was characterized by the rule of an efficient, dynamic, and sometimes ruthless political party that had emerged from the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Various events contributed to the demise of the PRI. The decline of its dominant position was set in motion in 1968 with the student demonstrations that rocked the country and its sleepy middle-class. This was followed by an earthquake in 1985 that catapulted numerous civil-society organizations to the centre stage of Mexican politics; and by the political strength of the National Action Party (PAN) in the north of the country in 1986.

The assassinations of 1994, the emergence of a rebel group in the south of the country, and the economic crisis of the mid 1990s, ultimately brought down a once invincible party. Today, the PRI is only the third strongest political force in Mexico.

What is of most interest in the light of the current breakaway from the ANC is the split from the PRI in 1987. The leader of the Democratic Current that divided the PRI in 1987 was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano. He was eloquently described as a “revolutionary prince”, by Samuel Dillon and Julia Preston, former New York Times correspondents in Mexico.

Cárdenas was the son of one of the most venerated revolutionary generals and Presidents of Mexico. Just before Cárdenas split from the PRI in 1987, he was governor of Michoacán state and was considered one of the pillars of the PRI. However, the poor democratic institutions that controlled presidential succession and the policies carried out by then President Miguel De la Madrid, forced Cárdenas to challenge the PRI and ultimately leave the institution that his father had helped create and consolidate. The PRI would not be so seriously weakened since Juan Andreu Almazán, a prestigious and powerful member of the party, ran for the presidency in 1940 with the backing of one of the opposition parties.

Miguel De la Madrid, President of Mexico from 1982 to 1988, was the first of the technocratic Presidents that opened up Mexico’s economy to the world. Such policies were usually accompanied by severe economic policies designed to reduce the country’s inflation and international debt. These “liberal” economic policies gradually installed a market economy that often neglected the traditional sectors of the “revolutionary” society like agriculture, organized labour, and even the bureaucracy. Cárdenas protested and ended up forming a dissident group within the PRI known as the Democratic Current.

Cárdenas and other members of the dissident group tried to change the process that had ruled presidential successions for the previous 57 years: at the end of a President’s term, the President would nominate a successor. The successor would become the PRI’s official candidate and, up to 1994, always became President of Mexico. Cárdenas tried to democratize the process, but his efforts only brought him disdain and political isolation. In late 1987, President De la Madrid named his successor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, a graduate from Harvard and a rising star in the bureaucracy that controlled Mexico’s economy. In response, Cárdenas accepted the nomination of a PRI satellite party for the Presidency of Mexico. The PRI expelled him.

The 1988 election result has been the most disputed in Mexico’s history. According to popular conspiracy theories Cárdenas won the presidential election, but the PRI and the federal government (through the Ministry of the Interior, which controlled the electoral institute that organized the elections) managed to manipulate the results and confirmed Salinas as Mexico’s new President.

Whether this is true or not, the 1988 elections were plagued by irregularities. Nevertheless, Salinas was confirmed president. His administration would complete the liberalization process, bring economic stability, and put Mexico’s economy at the forefront of the international political economy by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. Despite the popularity of Salinas, Cárdenas and others set about creating a powerful political movement. He and his allies, including Porfirio Munoz Ledo, a former President of the PRI, founded the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989. It constantly challenged Salinas’s reign over the country, often at a high cost, as many of its members disappeared or were assassinated.

The PRD was composed of many former PRI members but was also complemented by previously unaffiliated community organizers, activists, students, workers, and peasants, among others. The PRD was the only real opposition party during the PRI administration of 1988-1994, which was characterized by an implicit alliance between the PRI and the PAN. But this alliance only catapulted the PRD to the national stage and, with time, it became the third largest political force in the country.

The leadership of Cárdenas and the process set in motion in 1988 produced an authentic movement that balanced other political forces. Cárdenas ran again for President in 1994 and 2000, and he lost both elections. However, these elections were not as irregular as in 1988, and Cárdenas and the PRD accepted the results. Moreover, they managed to re-organize themselves and obtained a large proportion of seats in the Mexican Congress.

In 1997 the PRI had lost its absolute majority at the Chamber of Deputies. The same year Cárdenas was elected as the first Mayor of Mexico City. Since colonial times the administration of Mexico’s capital had been controlled by the central government (being Spain in colonial times or the President in post-independence years). Today, the PRD is the second political force in the country. It still controls Mexico City and has governors in five states across the country.

The split in the PRI was the beginning of a degenerative process that left the party without a popular leader that could lead the organisation into the 21st century. Once Cárdenas and his companions left the party it was only kept going through the residual momentum carried over from being in government for 70 years. The solid, yet aging political structure of the PRI, its relationship with the most powerful labour unions in the country, the network of modern caciques in the countryside, as well as some electoral prerogatives, bought the PRI a few more years in power, particularly in the provinces.

This momentum was eventually spent as the PRI was unable to come up with a strong leadership that could convincingly win elections. Future PRI candidates like Ernesto Zedillo (1994), Francisco Labastida (2000), and Roberto Madrazo (2006), were never popular and their controversial selection as candidates only reflected more turmoil, weakness, and division at the heart of the old party. Zedillo, a cabinet member during the Salinas administration, barely managed to win the Presidential election in 2000. That was the last time a candidate from the old PRI would win the Presidential seat.

If the ANC is meant to share the destiny of the PRI in Mexico, its members should make the best out of their time in office, as their days in government are numbered.

This article also appeared in the South African website Politicsweb on February 20, 2009.