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Scholar diagnoses Mexico's political ailments


Possible remedies for nation's democracy to be presented
By David Gaddis Smith
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 23, 2005

"Mexico's democracy is sick. It's ill," social scientist Sergio Aguayo says.

Aguayo, a professor at the Center for International Studies at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, said he had at one point thought President Vicente Fox's victory over Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Party in 2000 was going to make a fundamental and healthy difference in Mexico's system of governance.

"I assumed, childishly, that it would be enough with Vicente Fox," he said last week.

"I thought I could do my own thing, that everything had changed," said Aguayo, who ran unsuccessfully for office under the banner of the left-of-center Mexico Possible Party in 2003. "I was wrong."

He said he is done running for office and had rediscovered that "In democracy, you have to fight every day of your life."

Aguayo has strong credentials in the fight for democracy. He helped found the Mexican human rights group Alianza Civica, which played a large role in helping bring about more equitable elections.

Some of his research has focused on the Mexican government's Tlatelolco massacre of protesting students in 1968, seen as a watershed for the 32-year process of opening Mexico's political system enough so that someone like Fox could be elected.

Aguayo will give a talk at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday on "Some Possible Remedies for Mexico's Sick Democracy." Aguayo, a senior guest scholar at the center, also spoke last week at UCSD's Institute of the Americas.

Aguayo, who is preparing a book on Mexico's ills to be published before the July 2 presidential election, said Mexico's institutions are not working properly.

The Congress is not getting the caliber of people it needs, he said. Mexico's parties "are of poor quality and inefficient" and "are working in an extremely corrupt system" where too many elected officials are paid more than their U.S. counterparts, he said.

Aguayo said Mexico's public financing of parties, designed to even the playing field, needs to be changed. He said electoral authorities are unable to tell how much private money is flowing into campaigns.

He also said he is worried that drug money could find its way into campaigns.

He said that if he were the head of the Federal Electoral Institute, he would order a study to understand how money is used in campaigns, and then would use that knowledge to find more ways to prevent the use of dirty money in elections.

He saw bright spots, such as Mexico's more critical media. He said Mexico's freedom-of-information law has been a great stride forward. He said there is a greater civic participation in government.

Still, a paper by Mexico experts Todd Eisenstadt and Alejandro Poiré presented at the UCSD center this month said civic groups may have been weakened under the Fox administration because some of their top leaders joined the government.

Aguayo said that all too often, Mexican politicians have believed the offices they occupied belonged to them rather than to the Mexican people. He said what Mexico may need most of all "is the creation of a culture of accountability."