In the words of some opinion makers, presidential frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto is little more than a vapid frontman for a reinvigorated but still largely untrustworthy political machine unable to shed its decades-old modus operandi based on favor and graft.
Recent reports of former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governors amassing luxurious properties in the United States should make us wary of the party’s over-hyped “reformed” image but it would be shallow to sell short the opportunity that 44-year-old Peña Nieto may have to bring the nation closer together at an important moment in its history.
The PRI never had, nor will have an ideological platform. Foreign journalists like to describe the party as “centrist” but even that label is misleading. Formed in the aftermath of the 1910-1920 civil war, the PRI “institutionalized” the Revolution’s gains and functioned as an authoritarian but generally stabilizing force for the nation. It has wavered from left to right, from the socialist-leaning late 1930s under president Lazaro Cardenas, to the neo-liberalism of the 1990s under presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo.
Many high-minded citizens in Mexico will be wary of the type of characters who may get to fill official positions if the PRI is returned to power after more than a decade in opposition. But as two successive PAN presidential administrations and several PRD state governments have proved, corruption in this country is endemic and not the exclusive domain of one political party.
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