As both México and the United States are gearing up for national presidential elections for 2012, I offer some random comparisons between México and the U.S. This is after living in México for almost two decades. You might find it interesting.
Voting: In México it is each voting citizen gets one vote. Simple. No 18th century Electoral College. I witnessed the start of national presidential primary elections in the 1990s. Prior to that, under effective one party rule, the sitting president would select the man that would run to succeed him by the dedazo, (his finger). That ended under President Ernesto Zedillo.
And at that time an independent Electoral Commission was set up to make judgments and set up rules for elections. Final decisions for the vote count are ruled on by a special Electoral Court (not the Supreme Court) and the rulings are final. In fact it was this court that made the final ruling on our last presidential election. After a good number of recounts, the winner, the present president, won by 0.6%. Yes, the looser strutted around wearing a presidential sash and calling himself the “legitimate” president, but that novelty ran our quickly.
Term Limits: After a 36-year rule in the beginning of the twentieth century and that it looked like a revolution was the only way to unseat the corrupt president, that is exactly what happened; the Mexican Revolution. It lasted 7 years and in 1917, the present Mexican Constitution was put into force. One of its important clauses is that no Senator or Deputy (Representative) can run for reelection to their offices. As Francisco I. Madero, a revolutionary leader said that every Mexican citizen can run for election, but not run for reelection. No representative or senator in office for 30 or 40 years as in the US.
On the other hand, there is an underlying problem with this. Each member of congress comes in as a freshman with no hope of running for reelection. His loyalty is now with his party who will give him a chance to run for another office. A disconnect with the voters that elected him. And there is another more serious flaw in the system. The Mexican Senate consists of 128 members, with 96 members “proportionally” selected. In the Chamber (House) there are 500 seats with 200 proportional seats. 25% of the House seats and 40% of the Senate seats are given to the parties for direct selection. Each party submits a list of candidates before the election and each party is given a number of positions to appoint from its list in proportion to the percentage of votes that party got in the election. In this case, these proportional members have absolutely no responsibility to the voters at all. Just to the party. And this gives the parties enormous power.
Every few years, proposals to reduce the size of the Senate and Chamber as a cost saving is floated. And the chief means of cutting the legislative population is the elimination of the proportional seats. But it always dies a quiet death. The parties will not give up easily. Also the idea of making it possible for on reelection comes up frequently but the memories of the pre-Revolutionary years still come up. In my opinion, there is merit to limited reelection. At least you will have one term of a representative or senator trying to please the voters.
Terms: President, six-years and no reelection. Deputies (Representatives), one term of 3-years. Senators, one term of six-years.
Fiscal Controls: It used to be the norm that most presidents would leave office after a massive last year of wild spending leaving the incoming president the task to save the country from bankruptcy. This fiscal bomb last happened to the incoming president Zedillo and I was here in the “financial crisis of 1994”. Every month for a year, 10,000 companies went bankrupt, along with the company that I was working for. México was “bailed out” by the US after putting its oil production up for security. México paid that debt off in full, with interest early. Zedillo vowed never to see that six-year cycle repeated again, and it has not.
Under fiscal reforms placed by Zedillo, the yearly national budget has to be passed by a strict deadline with one house of congress developing the spending budget and the other house developing the income (tax) budget. These must be reconciled to within 2%. Mandatory give and take. Running the country for more than 6 months without a federal budget would be impossible in Mexico as the US just did.
México learned fiscal responsibility only recently, and it was a hard lesson. One wonders how hard the lesson is going to be for the US.
Officials Running for Office: One more interesting thing about México. An official who wants to run for office must resign from his present office before going out to campaign. The logic about this is that the taxpayers are paying the official to do a job, not to be running around and campaigning for another office. How logical! Now look at how many elected officials are now in full campaign mode in the US while not doing the jobs that they were elected (and paid) to do. And that includes the president himself. And I might add that the time (length) of the campaign is strictly limited by law.
Voter Identification: There is a voting identification card required for all voting which is issued by the Federal Election Institute. It is a tamper proof card with photo, fingerprints and physical information and the equivalent of your Social Security Number.
Although there are objections on using a like system in the US because it might make it harder to vote for poorer persons, it should be noted that Mexico has far higher voter participation rate than the US. And México is a far poorer nation than the US. The US objections just do not wash.
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Richard N. Baldwin T., a HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com) contributing columnist, lives in Tlalnepantla, Edo de México. E-mail at: [email protected]