Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Party lists can lead to this

In proportional elections, voters choose parties and parties choose candidates. Tracy Wilkinson, reporting in the Los Angeles Times, suggests that this process in Mexico leads to power for parties' elites, not representatives of the voters.

Thirty-two Senators (out of 128) and 200 deputies (out of 500) are elected to the Mexican Congress by proportional elections. The reporter implies that all legislators are elected this way, so we have to ask how well this reporter understands the Mexican electoral system. Nonetheless, the main point still seems valid: non-representative power brokers are in Congress because of the proportional elections.

The reporter also states that these people "were quietly elected to Congress in last week's vote without lifting a finger to campaign… " In fact, their campaigns were not public, but took place within the political party that chose them for Congressional seats.

Controversial figures voted into Mexico Congress

They are a handful of influential politicians, super-rich union leaders, their relatives and others who were quietly elected to Congress in last week's vote without lifting a finger to campaign…

Mexicans choose their federal senators and representatives by voting for a party and its slate of candidates, not for an individual person. Names of most candidates appear on the ballot. However, there is an elite group of candidates to whom the party leadership promises seats, whose names do not appear on the ballot…

For the parties, these candidates are useful because they inject a lot of money, in some cases, or their bids for office are a way to pay back favors. But they are individuals who have been wrapped up in controversies that might otherwise make their participation a liability…

Final results from the vote, which also elected the next president, Enrique Peña Nieto, made it possible to see who some of these questionable senators and representatives will be. They include:

Carlos Romero Deschamps, the super-powerful, very rich head of the union for workers in the gigantic state oil company Pemex

the daughter and grandson of Elba Esther Gordillo, the much-criticized "president for life" of the equally powerful teachers union

several people closely tied to the giant television broadcaster Televisa, which holds a virtual monopoly in Mexico and has been vigorously criticized for favorable coverage of Peña Nieto

Most, but not all, of the so-called impresentables were on the slate belonging to Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI…