People not familiar with Mexican politics and history may not appreciate the significance of this close presidential election. It’s easy to wring our hands about how “Peje Lagarto” (Lopez Obrador) got so many votes, and decry the leftward shift in Latin America. There’s no real surprise there, since Mexico has really been a Marxist state with a thin veneer of democracy since 1939. To quote Evelyn Waugh in Robbery Under Law (a book I highly recommend even if you’re not interested in Mexico, just because Waugh is incapable of being dull) there are no conservatives in Mexico.
No, the great news is the closeness of the election. During the old single-party-rule days of the PRI there was no such thing as a close election. If they “lost” an election, they merely did their own “recount” – and arranged for the ballots to tragically be destroyed in a fire. Or an inconvenient candidate might just turn up dead. A close election can only happen when elections are honest.
While Vicente Fox turned out to be even more Clintonian than I feared during the last campaign, and has been a disaster as a president, his election was a giant step forward for Mexico. And the man who deserves credit for not rigging the election is Ernesto Zedillo.
So while Zedillo may not get credit elsewhere for honestly losing an election, Buttle’s World salutes him for it.
Meanwhile, we would do well to learn something from Mexico’s election system. There you must present your voter card, which is a photo ID, before being allowed to vote. In California poll workers aren’t even allowed to ask for any kind of proof that you are who you are.
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