“Goodbye to the PRI.” That was the headline on the front page of the newspaper La Jornada on Monday, July 3, 2000. “Fox throws out the PRI,” reported Reforma, for its part, just a few hours after the victory of Vicente Fox, the first president to oust the PRI. Institutional Revolutionary Party of the official residence of Los Pinos, after an uninterrupted political dominance of more than seven decades. Milenio Diario spoke after the election day of the “end of hegemony”, as well with the tacit subject, but by Tuesday, July 4, nothing was saved: “PRI: the crisis explodes.” La Crónica de Hoy had already decreed it before: “The era of the PRI is over.”
Dulce María Sauri, the then national leader of the tricolor formation, still remembers the night the death certificate of the most dominant political party in the history of Mexico was issued. “They killed us when we lost the presidency, everyone left us for dead”, says Sauri, “they said that we were going to explode into a thousand pieces”. The politician, 71 years old and with more than four decades of PRI militancy, solemnly follows her story and launches mortuary metaphors to break the tension: “But since we did not die, they gave us a new expiration date: December 1 ”.
Despite everything, the inauguration of Fox arrived and the PRI was still there. In the 2003 midterm elections, he won the majority in the Chamber of Deputies. And by 2006, at the conclusion of another race for the presidency and despite falling to third place, the voices that predicted his demise were measured. “They no longer said that we were going to die, they only said that the PRI was hurt,” recalls Sauri. In 2012 they returned to the presidency, without realizing that they were going to be overwhelmed by the current party in government, Morena, in 2018. Now, 23 years after the “first death” of the tricolor, the funeral march has sounded again. In fact, it has been heard for years.
This time, however, is different. Because even in his lowest hours, almost to the point of eviction, he had maintained areas of the country where his power was impregnable. In recent years, the worst years, that myth has collapsed and those bastions have fallen little by little: Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Sinaloa, Campeche… Since the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the presidency, the PRI has competed in 23 state elections for governor and he has won only one: in Durango. It counts on the fingers of one hand the local Congresses in which it is a majority. And two of the three states where he still governs will go to the polls in two weeks: Coahuila and the State of Mexico.
Wrapped in corruption scandals, notoriously fragmented, far from its bases, dragging the worst results in its history and under the questioned leadership of Alejandro Alito Moreno, the old hegemonic party comes out to defend two fiefdoms in which it has never lost. He starts as a favorite in Coahuila, but remains low in the polls in Mexico, the entity with the most voters in the country, more than 12.5 million. Now, 23 years after its most bitter defeat, the incombustible force, the machinery for operating elections, the old party of the regime is once again leaning into the abyss. “The PRI is risking its life in the State of Mexico,” says political scientist Enrique Gutiérrez, a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Time and form
Gutiérrez maintains that the PRI’s appointment with history comes at its worst moment. The party is putting its main political stronghold on the line a year before the next presidential elections and received a vote of confidence from its partners in the opposition alliance Va por México and former enemies, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Revolution Party. Democratic Party (PRD), to defend it. “If what the polls suggest comes to fruition, it will be a pretty hard blow for the PRI at the national level,” says the specialist.
The effects range from symbolic imponderables to very tangible consequences: it implies losing the former home of the Atlacomulco group, but also billions of pesos in budget, millions of votes and hundreds of square kilometers of territory surrounding Mexico City, the center nerve center of power in the country. There is even a mental component. The PRI puts its prestige and credibility on the line in front of its opposition allies and in the face of its militancy, warns Gutiérrez. “For many analysts, this is the true litmus test for the PRI, not the presidential elections,” he points out.
Sauri agrees that the party’s survival depends on this year’s elections. “The victory would not be for the PRI, but for the electoral coalition, and it is a fundamental test to evaluate if it has real possibilities of confronting the official Morena machine,” says the politician, who has been governor, deputy and senator, and is now one of the most critical voices of Alito Moreno’s leadership.
In Sauri’s reckoning, however, it’s not just about winning or losing. “Forms matter a lot,” he explains. When asked about the election for the State of Mexico, various members of Va por México speak over and over again about the idea of having a “competitive election.” A defeat by a minimum difference, says Sauri, maintains the viability of the coalition, but a resounding setback “would have to be seen and carefully studied to analyze the sources of that defeat.” “The result can take the PRI out of the intensive care room and send it to medium therapy or it can keep it under a critical prognosis,” the former leader asserts.
“Obviously, if we don’t succeed, there are going to be many voices questioning the viability of the alliance, not only within the PRI, but also in other parties and in civil society,” acknowledges Claudia Ruiz Massieu, a PRI senator and candidate for the presidency in 2024. Ruiz Massieu, leader of the PRI after the debacle in July 2018 until August 2019, is reluctant to affirm that the future of the party depends on what happens in the State of Mexico and Coahuila. “In no way,” settles the legislator. “We are fighting in the State of Mexico, I think Alejandra del Moral has been a great candidate, she has rebounded and we are going to close with a good chance of winning,” she affirms.
elephants in the room
The final stretch of the campaign faces two irreconcilable narratives. Delfina Gómez’s team, Morena’s candidate and favorite in the polls, affirms that her victory is inevitable. “They are leaving,” Gómez has repeated on more than one occasion. The circle of Del Moral, the flag of Va por México, insists that it has already shortened the distance with its competitor and has been pushing for days the discourse that the election is in a “technical tie”, despite the fact that the most promising polls they put between six and five points below. “I already caught up with you and I’m going to beat you,” said the PRI candidate in this week’s electoral debate.
Before this year’s elections, the hypotheses about the decline of the PRI, which less than five years ago still held the presidency and governed in most states, have multiplied. The rise of López Obrador and the development of Morena as an electoral steamroller clashes with what Gutiérrez calls an “emptying” of the opposition, that is, the absence of an attractive discourse for the population, of a clear project to return to the close-ups and known leaders. There are also the fractures, which have been evidenced in the Chambers; the massive migration to other forces, with candidates who had decades of PRI militancy and today are with Morena, and the questioned loyalties of former governors who stepped aside and assumed political exile clinging to an embassy.
Sauri admits that the corruption scandals of old members of the ephemeral “new PRI” took their toll, criticizes that party discipline has relegated critical voices, and points out that it is urgent to return to work in the territory. Ruiz Massieu comments that an exercise of reflection and internal transformation has been postponed for years, to convince the militants, but above all a citizenry that is more demanding and that has broad sectors that have felt “mistreated” during the Government of Lopez Obrador.
In the field of the immediate, much has been said about the absence of Governor Alfredo del Mazo in the campaign of his political institute, but the keys seem to lie more in finding the PRI structure and starting its territorial operation. “The great unknown is where the PRI’s hard vote is going to move, from the outside, it seems that this great machinery is very absent,” Gutiérrez asserts. “What happens with that base, by action or omission, will be decisive and it is one of the great elephants in the room,” he adds.
Looking for a culprit
Between the past, the present and the future, as well as with diagnoses and forecasts divided on the crisis of the party, the delimitation of responsibilities has already reached the protagonists. Sauri and Ruiz Massieu agree that in an election all eyes are on the leadership. “We leaders always have to assume political responsibility, but the underlying problem is much more complex and goes beyond one, two or ten people,” comments Ruiz Massieu. “The truth is that in these last four years there is a person with a first and last name who is responsible,” Sauri says of Alito, whom he criticizes for his concentration of power within the party and for remaining at the helm of the tricolor until next year. . “It’s not good news for the PRI,” he says.
But political times do not give room to find an immediate way out of the crisis and everything points to the fact that they are going to have to gamble with what they have. At this juncture, Del Moral has tried to press on in the final stretch, with the weight of history on her shoulders, but recognized within her party for gaining the trust of the PAN and PRD electoral bases, for her work on proposals and for not giving his arm to twist, even calling the PRI members to “do what they have to do.” Gutiérrez anticipates that, despite everything, the risk of him being one of the scapegoats is latent. Everything remains open until June 4, the day of the election.
Heading towards 2024, in the race for the longest presidential succession in history, Ruiz Massieu appeals to the party’s ability to adapt and to strengthen itself in the new role that falls to it as a member of the electoral coalition that seeks to challenge López Obrador, but points out that it is urgent to define the steps to follow. “There is time, but we need a clear route,” says the senator, one of at least five PRI members who aspire to the candidacy. “This election is a very important thermometer,” she adds.
Sauri, a veteran of a thousand battles, refers to history to find explanations and new encouragement. He remembers that it was not easy after Fox’s triumph, but that the Mexican militancy took the caste to promote Enrique Peña Nieto as governor in 2005. He says that in 2011, when Eruviel Ávila won, “it was not an easy choice” nor was it when Del Mazo won by a range of 200,000 votes. “I have to admit that they have never had it more difficult,” she finally admits. The ex-leader affirms that she “is not optimistic about the immediate future” as far as the destinations of the party are concerned, but she asks for patience until they uncover and put all the cards on the table. “In the end, one day we are all going to die, both individuals and institutions, what we don’t know is when,” she says minutes before hanging up the phone.
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