[NYTr] Oaxaca: Winner of State Election is... Abstentionism

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

NarcoNews - Aug 6, 2007
http://www.narconews.com/Issue46/article2756.html

And the Winner of Oaxaca's State Legislative Election
Is...Abstentionism 

Voters Declare "a Pox on Both Your Houses"

By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca

More than seventy percent of Oaxaca’s registered voters did not vote in
the state elections on Sunday, August 5. Approximately two and a half
million voters were eligible to select the 42 deputies who represent
the 25 electoral districts, by a system which employs direct and
proportional selection.

In the popular repudiation of all candidates of all parties, the 25
districts were “won” by the PRI, from fewer than 30% of the possible
voters.

The record level of abstentions indicates that the call for the
“punishment vote” issued by the APPO was not enough to overcome popular
feeling that the electoral system doesn’t work and is irrelevant to the
lives of Oaxaqueños.

While some may believe that “democracy” consists in the freedom to
choose between Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama, followed by the freedom
to choose between Democrat or Republican, the people of Oaxaca know
that for them, political parties represent no choice at all. Almost
universally they despise the corruption of parties and delegates
controlled by and for money.

For most Oaxaqueños, “democracy” must be participative, without
leaders, and based on local assemblies. While local assemblies are
indeed proliferating since the onset of the Popular Movement in 2006,
the system remains locked into the old party corruption. In Mexico the
breakthrough from one established party to alternative parties is very
recent. In 1989 Ernesto Ruffo Appel was elected the first opposition
governor in Baja California as part of the PAN party. Two years later,
his future successor in the Baja California government, Héctor Terán
Terán, became the first federal senator from the PAN. For the
presidency, an alternate candidate wasn’t elected until the year 2000.
The third party, the PRD, won the Federal District presidency of Mexico
City only within the decade.

The internal corruption spread from party to party, in a power struggle
which eliminated the people as players.

In Oaxaca, the governor, and control on the state level, has been in
the hands of the PRI for almost eighty years. Control of all the powers
– legislative, judicial and executive– in Oaxaca has always been PRI,
and always dominated by the governor. But he can not claim a popular
mandate in 2007.

On Sunday, voting day, the city looked calm. At the small pre-school
nearby, the street was lined with cars bringing voters. That was
warning sign. One need only ask, who has a car? A friend told me that
in her colonia, when she went to vote, the voting place was empty. Hers
is a family which only recently built an indoor kitchen, but still
bathes out of buckets. No car.

I arrived at the zócalo in time to hear Florentino Lopez, the APPO
spokesperson, announce to yesterday’s small rally the withdrawal of the
APPO, including Section 22, from their encampment in the square. By
nightfall one could see the tent supports being dismantled. The zócalo
has been filled with vendors and noise; will they stay, or also go?
Lopez announced upcoming plans for the next march, August 10. He said
that other plans are being made. I guessed that without results of
Sunday’s elections, no plans could have been made beyond getting all
the teachers back to their towns to prepare for the October 7 choices
for municipal presidents. Asambleas of both Section 22 and the APPO
will take place next week.

City councilors and presidents will be selected October 7 for the 570
towns in the state. Of these, 418 govern themselves by the rules for
usos y costumbres (ways and customs) and 152 by political parties. In
municipalities where authorities are chosen by the system of usos y
costumbres, community assemblies for naming authorities may be carried
out all year long.

The August 5 state legislature elections were staged under great
political instability. Even before the vote count, news came that the
townspeople of La Ventosa in the Isthmus on August 5 burned up the
election ballots, the ballot boxes, and the polling booths in a
confrontation between PRI and PRD factions. La Ventosa is one of the
towns in conflict over the introduction of wind generators on communal
lands. To what extent illegal practices were carried out by the
government on August 5, we don’t yet know: a first complaint was
received from the Sierra Norte. Irregularities apparently have to do
with failure to install voting booths, but those problems, at this
moment, appear to be few, affecting only a thousand or so voters.
Perhaps it no longer matters.

The social crisis which exploded in the state in the middle of the past
year continues; the assassinated are mourned; the disappeared are
sought; four of the imprisoned have not been released. The economy is
shot to hell, restaurants have closed, and with few if any American
tourists, the vendors earn a scant living. One could speculate about
the consequences of giving up on the electoral system.

Furthermore, 188 public schools were taken during the political
conflict by parents of families and instigated by municipal authorities
sympathetic to the PRI, or specifically, by teachers of the Comité
Central de Lucha (CCL), the dissident wing of Section 22 of the SNTE.
Many of these schools have not been returned to teachers of Section 22;
the situation has led to violent confrontations between teachers and
parents, with no resolution offered by the government despite so-called
negotiations.

Another confrontation is taking place in various municipalities where
the Popular City Councilors have taken charge: municipal authorities
were disowned and authorities from the people were named. This is the
case in San Antonino Castillo Velasco, Santa María Atzompa, Villa de
Zaachila (see the garbage trucks with slogans), San Juan Lalana, and
others. “Bills coming due” both to sympathizers of the APPO and to
sympathizers of the PRI may show up in the October elections.

Meanwhile social mobilization has spread. Following the assault by the
governor on the marchers for the Popular Guelaguetza, once again
feelings run high. The zócalo has been adorned with twenty-one wooden
crosses, each with the name of a hero fallen in the struggle. Daily
demands, both locally and from abroad as with Amnesty International, to
free the political prisoners and respect human rights are ignored, as
is the demand for the ouster of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz as Governor of
Oaxaca. The system doesn’t work.

If all this weren’t enough, the current election was shaped by the
Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation which examined an Electoral
Reform passed by the Congress of Oaxaca in the month of September 2006.
This Electoral Reform, passed somehow while no true governability was
possible at the height of the crisis, reduced lengths of campaigns,
removed the ability of the Congress to qualify the elections, reduced
prerogatives of the political parties, and outrageously, lengthened by
a year the period of office of the deputies and municipal presidents,
pushing elections back to 2008. This last part was what the Supreme
Court threw out. Write-in votes have never been valid, because a
candidate requires certification by a political party or parties, no
matter how many votes he/she receives. These are the political
conditions in which the electoral process in Oaxaca proceeded.

Meanwhile, the practices of purchase and compulsion of votes continues.
In the federal elections of 2006, the civil organization EDUCA and the
Foro Ciudadano de Oaxaca, jointly documented the following practices of
buying and compelling votes, and one might suppose they continued on
August 5:

    * Storing materials and supplies in official warehouses, handing
out tools and supplies, asking for electoral credentials, payments for
attending campaign meetings, and promises of public services or social
programs. Allegedly ten thousand irregular taxi concessions were sold
in return for votes.

    * Use of State Social Programs to further the candidacies, such as
Program Firm Floor, Mobile Units for Development, Modules for Machinery
and Program for Adult Literacy.
    * The Public Information Media, especially the Oaxaca Corporation
of Radio and Television, used public space to promote public works and
handing out of Government resources as if they were part of the
campaign.

    * Channeling public resources through the town councils,
intimidation against municipal presidents of the North Sierra, South
Sierra and the Isthmus, who were informed that if the PRI didn’t win in
these municipalities they would no longer receive resources or they
would be audited.

    * Compulsory work, especially in government offices, with the
structure of links of assistance. Obliging employees to fill lists with
names of voters and the number of their voting credential, as they were
obliged to bring in votes for the PRI.

    * Contempt on the part of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz for the Accord
of Political Neutrality, promulgated by the Federal Electoral
Institute. In addition to making public declarations to minimize the
accord, he traveled the state doing electoral political proselytizing,
handing out social aid and calling for votes for PRI candidates.
Newspapers such as Noticias have carried for the past month daily paid
political articles depicting good works done by the governor and the
PRI. I guess nobody was convinced.

Oaxaca is a key state. The necessity for institutional changes and
profound reforms remain. Civil society as well as the APPO aim to
extend civic education and citizen participation. The stated goals are
to guarantee economic, racial and gender equity, establish horizontal
popular control, make transparent the use of public resources, and fund
social programs. With a majority of the population situated outside the
legal electoral system, Oaxaca has a long way to go.