A general election is to be held in Mexico on Sunday, July 1, 2012. Voters will go to the polls to elect, on the federal level: A new President of the Republic to serve a six-year term, replacing President Felipe Calderón (ineligible for re-election under the 1917 Constitution)
Many Mexicans see the July 1 election as a race among flawed choices: the popular former mayor of Mexico City with a messianic self-regard; a telegenic leading man who wrote a book but has been vague about which books he has read; and a perky, gal-next-door type who does a lot of smiling but has been blank on specifics.
All parties have doubts about loosening registration requirements. Mexican elections were once notorious for fraud. Postal votes make that harder to police, says Joy Langston, a political scientist at CIDE university in Mexico City. Enforcing campaign rules, such as limits on broadcasting, is harder outside the country. As economic migrants, many of whom have no plans to return, it may be that most Mexicans living abroad are not very interested in elections back home anyway.
The 12m or so Mexicans who live in the United States are equal to a tenth of Mexico’s population, and the remittances they send home make up over 2% of the economy. But when it comes to politics, they are far less influential. At the latest presidential election in 2006, they had the right to vote for the first time, but only 57,000 applied to do so.
It has been routinely suggested that Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) dominated Mexican politics with one-party rule for most of the 20th century.
And today, the key to Mexico's successful future may lie less in local political agendas and more on who can effectively govern an entire nation.
Josefina Vazquez Mota became the first woman to represent a major party in the Mexican presidential election, which backers hope will excite voters weary of the drug violence and political gridlock of her party’s leader, President Felipe Calderon.
“Six years ago, the atmosphere previous to the elections was one of enthusiasm; there were conversations with friends, debates, a combative interest,” said Guadalupe Loaeza, a popular columnist for the Mexican news daily Reforma. “Now, it is the opposite; there is disappointment, hopelessness, weariness, incredulity, distance, uncertainty.”
Mexico will hold its presidential election July 1 against the backdrop of a protracted war against criminal cartels in the country. Former President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) launched that struggle; his successor, Felipe Calderon, also of the PAN, greatly expanded it.
A fact, regarding President Felipe Calderon's war on organized crime, is that the cartels have routinely mounted operations and attacks on government, police and the military, and against other Mexican officials, utilizing sophisticated counterintelligence strategies. They do this with their own networks of spies and massive amounts of money, informants, enforcers and other sources of bought information, along with paramilitary-style tactics and armaments.
The Mexican economy cannot take a back seat to a continuing all out aggressive war on crime and drugs, as it must also move strategically forward in creating jobs and opportunities. Necessary issues of health care, trade, infrastructure repair and development must also remain as critical components of Mexico's national agenda.
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