This Sunday Mexico will experience an election likely to draw world attention like no midterm — or any election where the presidential seat is not up for grabs — has ever done before.
The reasons for this unusual international interest can easily be summarized: in more than one sense, these Mexican elections have unprecedented characteristics.
Firstly, this is the first time in Mexico’s history independent candidates, i.e. those not nominated by a political party, are allowed to run. To the surprise of party politicians, the “party-ocracy” that has controlled political power for nearly a century, an independent candidate is leading in the polls to become governor of the state of Nuevo Leon, considered the business capital of the country and regularly favored by large foreign investments.
Jaime Rodriguez, known as “The Bronco,” is challenging the political parties with open support from leading Monterrey entrepreneurs and business leaders, and his campaign is receiving media coverage worldwide, including in the Washington Post, BBC and Le Monde.
Another unprecedented aspect of this election is that, for the first time in the country’s modern history, there are regions where violence and economic and social instability are threatening the installation of ballot boxes and the ability to vote without fear. The media has reported in various parts of the country the burning of ballots, as well as attacks on the offices of the body that oversees elections, causing damage and destruction making elections inoperable.
So, the Mexican government faces the challenge that its major economic and finance reforms, which were unveiled this year, will end up being overshadowed or annulled by an incomplete election that lacks credibility.
Given this risk, the Mexican Interior Ministry decided to deploy the full force of the country’s military and police forces, some 350,000 officers, to monitor the elections and try to ensure they happen peacefully. A military deployment of this scale was not even carried out in the troubled 1994 elections, when an armed uprising on the southern border and the murder of the leading presidential candidate threatened the authorities at the time.
There will be much to see and report in Mexico this Sunday, June 7.
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