The frontrunner in Mexico’s presidential election has promised to bring down the death toll in his country’s bloody drug war, prompting American fears he may step back from directly confronting the cartels.
Enrique Pena Nieto, presidential
candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), receives a
hug from a supporter during his final campaign rally
Mexico’s 80 million voters will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new
president for the first time since the military was deployed against the
drug barons six years ago, beginning a bloody conflict that has already cost
50,000 lives.
Enrique Peña Nieto, a telegenic former governor who enjoys a commanding
14-point lead, has vowed to shift the focus away from disrupting the
cartels’ smuggling operations and look instead to curb the violence that all
too often ends in beheadings or with bodies hung publicly from bridges.
“This doesn’t mean that we don’t pay attention to other crimes, or that we
don’t fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is
diminishing violence in the country,” he told the Associated Press.
He has promised to gradually withdraw the roughly 40,000 soldiers deployed
across the country, replacing them with a national gendarmerie tasked with
bringing down violent crime.
American officials fear that in practice this may mean a return to a tacit
agreement with the cartels, where their multi-billion dollar narcotics
business is allowed to continue to ship drugs to the US in exchange for a
reduction in killing on Mexico’s streets.
However, some experts suggest that the current government’s policy of
targeting cartel leaders has left the organisations in the hands of their
more ruthless and chaotic deputies, who may prove impossible to reign in.
“Many people are going to vote for [Mr Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party] because they remember fondly the stable days when governments worked quietly with the cartels and made side deals. But who do you make a deal with now? The lieutenants are more fragmented and harder to negotiate with,” said Diana Negroponte, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.
The 45-year-old Mr Peña Nieto, who is married to one of the country’s most popular soap opera actresses, is a young face on an old party. The PRI, once described as “the perfect dictatorship”, ruled Mexico for 71 years until finally being cast out in 2000 by an electorate exhausted after decades of corruption, backroom deals and sometimes violence.
While the centrist candidate, who surrounds himself with Harvard- and Oxford-educated advisors, has promised a renewed party, critics accuse him of “old PRI” tactics, including an uncomfortably close relationship with Televisa, Mexico’s largest television channel.
At a book fair last year, Mr Peña Nieto was asked to list some of the books that had influenced his life. After several moments of faltering he eventually said he had read “parts” of the Bible, an answer that led to him being widely mocked.
But an American diplomatic source compared him to George W Bush during the 2000 election: an astute politician whose folksy manner means he is often underestimated by opponents. “He has a quick mind and a fast repartee and he understands people. He has political smarts,” they said.
While Mr Peña Nieto’s lead appears insurmountable polls show that around 14 per cent of the electorate, more than 10 million voters, have yet to make up their minds.
Some fear that if the polls were to narrow at the last moment then Andres Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), might stage a repeat of the mass protests he led after the close 2006 elections. The demonstrations, attended by millions, virtually shut down Mexico City for several weeks.
“It’s a possible scenario, we can’t discount it,” said one diplomat, adding that the scale of Mr Peña Nieto’s lead would probably discourage Mr López Obrador, who is currently running second.
Josefina Vázquez Mota, the conservative candidate from President Felipe Calderón’s governing National Action Party, looks set to come third, undermined by a poorly-run campaign and the machismo of Mexican politics.
She nearly fainted at one rally, drawing ridicule from male political commentators.
“For women it isn’t so much a glass ceiling in Mexico as a steel one,” said Dr Negroponte.
The presidential campaign has so far been spared the political violence that marred previous elections. A leading candidate to become governor of a key border state was gunned down just days before the 2010 elections.
“Many people are going to vote for [Mr Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party] because they remember fondly the stable days when governments worked quietly with the cartels and made side deals. But who do you make a deal with now? The lieutenants are more fragmented and harder to negotiate with,” said Diana Negroponte, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.
The 45-year-old Mr Peña Nieto, who is married to one of the country’s most popular soap opera actresses, is a young face on an old party. The PRI, once described as “the perfect dictatorship”, ruled Mexico for 71 years until finally being cast out in 2000 by an electorate exhausted after decades of corruption, backroom deals and sometimes violence.
While the centrist candidate, who surrounds himself with Harvard- and Oxford-educated advisors, has promised a renewed party, critics accuse him of “old PRI” tactics, including an uncomfortably close relationship with Televisa, Mexico’s largest television channel.
At a book fair last year, Mr Peña Nieto was asked to list some of the books that had influenced his life. After several moments of faltering he eventually said he had read “parts” of the Bible, an answer that led to him being widely mocked.
But an American diplomatic source compared him to George W Bush during the 2000 election: an astute politician whose folksy manner means he is often underestimated by opponents. “He has a quick mind and a fast repartee and he understands people. He has political smarts,” they said.
While Mr Peña Nieto’s lead appears insurmountable polls show that around 14 per cent of the electorate, more than 10 million voters, have yet to make up their minds.
Some fear that if the polls were to narrow at the last moment then Andres Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), might stage a repeat of the mass protests he led after the close 2006 elections. The demonstrations, attended by millions, virtually shut down Mexico City for several weeks.
“It’s a possible scenario, we can’t discount it,” said one diplomat, adding that the scale of Mr Peña Nieto’s lead would probably discourage Mr López Obrador, who is currently running second.
Josefina Vázquez Mota, the conservative candidate from President Felipe Calderón’s governing National Action Party, looks set to come third, undermined by a poorly-run campaign and the machismo of Mexican politics.
She nearly fainted at one rally, drawing ridicule from male political commentators.
“For women it isn’t so much a glass ceiling in Mexico as a steel one,” said Dr Negroponte.
The presidential campaign has so far been spared the political violence that marred previous elections. A leading candidate to become governor of a key border state was gunned down just days before the 2010 elections.
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