By Robyn Marshall
In the August 21 national elections in Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, presidential candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), won the ballot with 50% of the vote. The conservative National Action Party (PAN) received 27% and the centre-left candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solirzano for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), came third with 16%.
The elections included 96 Senate seats and 300 positions in the Chamber of Deputies.
A state election was held simultaneously in Chiapas, the southern state where the peasant rebellion led by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) broke out on January 1. Amado Avendano Figueroa was the candidate for the PRD and a coalition of grassroots and human rights organisations. His program followed that of the EZLN.
Avendano was seriously injured in a July 25 car crash which the government insisted was accidental. Avendano and his supporters consider it an assassination attempt.
Throughout the country, the biggest problem was the "special polling places" where citizens could vote if they were absent from their place of residence. The parties had agreed to allow 300 ballots for each of these polling places, which proved to be totally inadequate. Angry absentee voters were unable to vote and created incidents in many places, including Mexico City.
The worst incidents occurred in Chiapas, where many people couldn't vote because of displacement by the uprising. There were also ballot shortages in some indigenous communities where Avendano and Cardenas were expected to win. Some 37% of the polling booths opened after 9am despite the official opening hour being 8am. Twenty-eight per cent of voters could not find themselves on the electoral roll and so were prevented from voting.
In some areas, police tear-gassed voters. In other areas people refused a vote burned ballots and some even took officials hostage. In contrast to previous elections, the voter turnout was high.
The 1994 elections were not as blatantly fraudulent as the 1988 elections, in which the PRI presidential candidate Salinas was declared the winner after a mysterious computer crash which lasted for two weeks.
Civic Alliance, an independent monitoring group, said that it will take several weeks to examine the results from the 96,000 polling booths to see whether the reported irregularities were intentional, accidental or systematic and to see who benefited.
The PRI in the last 12 years has radically opened the Mexican economy to private investment. As a result of the recent North American Free Trade Agreement, in which the USA, Canada and Mexico have formed a common market, the cost of living in Mexico will soar.
Despite the electoral set back, the Mexican left and the social movements are more unified and better organised than before. The PRD had run as a broad Democratic Alliance with grassroots organisations, left parties and social movements. The final rally of Cardenas in Mexico City filled the central plaza with more than 100,000 people, in contrast to Zedillo's 25,000.
The campaign newspaper of the PRD has spoken of an active organising campaign over many issues facing the population. Just before the elections, Acapulco slum dwellers blocked a highway, Tabasco residents held a sit-in a central plaza and Puebla street vendors camped out in the city square. The Mexican population still seems unenthusiastic about the PRI and Zedillo.
The election result may be a spur to further mass mobilisations. There have been reports that more guerilla conflicts would break out in states such as Michoacan and Guerrero. The EZLN has instructed its troops not to take any action until its coalition organisation, the National Democratic Convention (CND), has come to a decision.
It is thought the PRI will now take advantage of its victory to escalate human rights violations, especially in Chiapas. There was a massive intimidation campaign run by the PRI, which will by the next election have been in office continuously for 71 years. The PRI played on fear by portraying support for the PRD and the Alliance as a vote for terrorism and economic chaos.