Annex 2. Profile of the presidential candidates and their parties
Andrés Manuel López Obrador/Alliance for the Good of All
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The candidate
Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the presidential candidate of a coalition led
by the centre-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). His candidacy is also
supported by two smaller parties of the centre-left: the Workers’ Party (PT) and
Convergence Party (C).
López Obrador served as mayor of Mexico City (2000-2005). A native of the
south-eastern state of Tabasco, he served in several public positions in the state and federal
government in PRI administrations before leaving the party in 1988 to support the presidential
campaign of Cuautémoc Cárdenas under a centre-left coalition. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and his
coalition lost such election to the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari amid a number of
irregularities. López Obrador ran for governor of Tabasco as part of such coalition in 1988
and then joined the PRD, which was founded in 1989 by the members of this coalition. He
lost again a highly controversial election for governor of Tabasco in 1994 against Roberto
Madrazo of the PRI amid claims of fraud. From 1996 to 1999 he served as president of the
PRD.
López Obrador has a B.A. in Public Administration from the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM) and has published several books.
•
His party and alliances
The Democratic Revolutionary Party was formed in 1989 as a fusion between two centre-left
movements in the country. One, the Democratic Current, was a dissident group within the
PRI, which broke away from the governing party in 1988 to support the candidacy of
Cuautémoc Cárdenas, son of one of Mexico’s most famous presidents. The other was a
coalition of left-wing parties that had been formed a few years before. These two movements
came together to support Cárdenas’ campaign in 1988 and a year later created a unified party,
the PRD, which remains the largest centre-left party in Mexico.
The PRD currently governs Mexico City and 18% of the remaining municipalities, where
16% of the population lives. It has three state governors. The party won only 16.6% of the
vote in the 2000 elections.
Only one candidate registered to run in the party’s primary elections for president: Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, who was Governor of Mexico City from 2000-2005. In July 2005, he
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left office in the city, where he was highly popular, to run for the presidency. There were
initial indications that party founder Cárdenas might compete for the presidential candidacy,
but he finally declined to do so.
For the 2006 federal elections, the Democratic Revolution Party, the Workers Party, and
Convergence Party
Official webpage: www.prd.org.mx
Roberto Madrazo Pintado/Alliance for Mexico
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The candidate
Roberto Madrazo Pintado was the presidential candidate of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Green Party (PVEM).
Madrazo served as a member of Congress from 1976-79 and from 1991-93
and as a Senator from 1988-91. He was governor of his home state of
Tabasco from 1994 to 2000. He ran unsuccessfully as a candidate in the
PRI primaries in 1999. In 2002 he was elected national president of the
PRI and he served in this position until 2005 when he launched his
presidential candidacy.
He has a law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and
completed graduate studies in urban and population development at the University of
California.
•
His party and alliances
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was formed in 1929 by then President Plutarco
Elias Calles as a way of bringing together competing political factions in the aftermath of the
Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Originally called the National Revolutionary Party (PNR)
and later the Party of Mexican Revolutionary (PRM), it assumed its current name in 1946.
The party is hard to categorize ideologically and calls its principles “revolutionary
nationalism”.
For 71 years, from 1929 to 2000, the PRI was the leading party in Mexico. It won all state
elections until 1989, a majority of congressional seats until 1997, and all presidential elections
until 2000. Although other parties were allowed to compete, the PRI maintained political
hegemony throughout most of this period. It was organized in three sectors: the labor sector,
the rural sector, and the popular sector, which brought together hundreds of PRI-affiliated
organizations throughout Mexico. Today the party still holds 18 of 31 governorships and 51%
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of all municipalities, where 48% of the population lives. Until this election, it remained the
largest party in both Chambers of the Federal Congress.
For decades the PRI was able to bring together politicians from very different ideologies and
backgrounds, attracted by certainty that the party would always win the elections. Even before
loosing the presidential elections in 2000, cohesion at the PRI began to wither as development
of truly democratic institutions and laws took away the certainty of retaining the power that
held the different factions together. Roberto Madrazo was chosen president of the PRI
because it was thought that his knowledge and political abilities would allow him to hold the
party together; however, as he imposed his authority the unity of the party further
deteriorated.
Madrazo negotiated with the Green Ecologist Party to form the Alliance for Mexico, probably
under the impression that the Green Party would bring the extra votes needed to win the
presidential election. But in order to obtain the support of the Green Ecologist Party he had to
offer a large share of the seats for Congress on through proportional representation, which has
farther created resentment among would-be deputies and senators from PRI.
Official website: www.pri.org.mx
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
•
The candidate
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa is the presidential candidate of the National
Action Party (PAN).
In the Fox administration Calderón served as both Secretary of Energy
and Director of the National Bank of Public Works and Services
(Banobras), but he resigned as Secretary in 2004 over a disagreement with President Fox. A
lifelong member of the PAN, he served as the party’s legislative coordinator in the House of
Deputies (lower house of Congress) from 2000 to 2003 and then as President of the PAN
from 1996 to 1999. He was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of his home state of
Michoacán in 1995.
He has a law degree from the Escuela Libre de Derecho and has Master’s degrees in
Economics from ITAM and in Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government.
•
His party
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The National Action Party (PAN) was founded in 1939 by Manuel Gómez Morín. It defines
itself as a party dedicated to “political humanism”, that is, liberal values based on a respect for
the individual. The PAN is often categorized as centre-right and is close to Christian
Democratic parties elsewhere in Latin America.
The party won its first municipality in 1947 and maintained a national presence from the
1940s on, consistently winning seats in the Congress. In 1989, Ernesto Ruffo Appel of the
PAN became the firs State governor who was not a member of the PRI since the 1930s.
Thereafter, the PAN won several other State governorships and municipal elections, including
most of the country’s largest cities. In 2000, Vicente Fox was elected President of Mexico as
a candidate of the PAN, in alliance with Green Ecologist Party, with 42.5% of the vote.
Before the election, the PAN held nine of 31 governorships and 28% of the municipalities
where 35% of the population lives.
The PAN held a three-way primary in September-October 2005 to choose its presidential
candidate. All party members and registered sympathizers, approximately one million citizens
in all, were eligible to vote in the primaries, which took place in three broad geographical
regions. The three candidates were Felipe Calderón, former Secretary of Energy and president
of the party; Santiago Creel, former Secretary of the Interior; and Alberto Cárdenas, former
Secretary of the Environment and Governor of Jalisco. At the outset Creel was widely
believed to be the frontrunner, given his visibility as President Fox’s chief of cabinet.
However, Calderón mounted a strong campaign and won all three primaries, finishing with
51.7 % of all votes cast.
Official webpage: www.pan.org.mx
Roberto Campa/New Alliance Party
•
The Candidate
Roberto Campa is the presidential candidate for the New Alliance party, a
new political organization which is competing for the first time in the 2006
elections. The party is often associated with the National Teachers’ Union
and its leader, Elba Esther Gordillo, although it has no organic ties to this
union.
Until 2005 Campa was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). From 19821984 he served as Director General of the Committee on Development and Planning for
Mexico City. From 1984-1988 he was Secretary of the Committee on Reconstruction of the
Metropolitan Area of Mexico City, formed after the 1985 earthquakes. Campa was the
Coordinator in Mexico City for the presidential campaigns of both Ernesto Zedillo and Luis
Donaldo Colosio. He served in the Mexico City legislative assembly from 1991 to 1994, the
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year in which he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In 2003 he was once again elected
to the Chamber of Deputies. During the 2006 primaries Campa joined Democratic Unity, a
group within the PRI that wanted to prevent the candidacy of Roberto Madrazo. After
Madrazo was elected in the PRI’s primary, he left the party and was elected as the candidate
of the New Alliance Party.
Campa has a law degree from the Anáhuac University and a B.A. in economics from the
Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM).
•
His party
The New Alliance Party was formed in 2005 and obtained its registration from the Federal
Electoral Institute. Commentators often cite the National Union of Education Workers
(SNTE), Mexico’s largest union, which has traditionally been associated with the PRI, as the
group responsible for forming the New Alliance Party. The leader of the SNTE, Elba Esther
Gordillo, was until recently Secretary General of the PRI, but broke off with Roberto
Madrazo, then president of PRI and is often cited as the party's leader; however, she holds no
official office in it and the SNTE has no organic relationship to the new party.
The New Alliance Party seeks to become the true party of the young people of México. The
President of the Party is Miguel Ángel Jiménez Godínez.
Official website: www.nueva-alianza.org.mx
Patricia Mercado/Alternative
•
The candidate
Patricia Mercado is the presidential candidate of the new-left Social
Democratic and Peasant Alternative party, a recently created political
organization which is competing for the first time in the 2006 elections.
Patricia Mercado is a founder and former president of the party. Before that, she
founded and chaired another party, México Posible (“The Mexico that is
Possible”), which failed to achieve enough votes to secure its registry in the 2003 elections,
although it won one seat on the Mexico City council. Mercado ran for Congress in 1991
representing the Revolutionary Workers’ Party and represented Mexico in the World
Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Mercado is a widely known feminist activist who
has been prominent in campaigns for equal rights, abortion rights and the right of
homosexuals to marry. She was President of Women Workers United-Labor Action
(MUTUAC-MAS, 1986-1991); Director of the Group for Information and Reproductive
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Choice (GIRE, 1992-1996), and Executive Director of Gender Equity, Citizenship, Work and
Family (1997-2001).
Mercado has a B.A. in Economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM) and in 1992 received a scholarship from the MacArthur Foundation.
•
Her party
The Social Democratic and Peasants Alliance is a small party that was registered in the
Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) in July 2005. It started out as a political alliance between
former members of México Posible (“The Mexico that is Possible”), a party that competed in
the 2003 elections but failed to meet the vote threshold to keep its registry, and several ruralbased social organizations. Many of the members of the party have been members of four
previous parties, the Social Democratic party, México Posible, Citizens’ Force, and the
Popular and Peasants Party. The party defines itself as “New Left”.
The president of the party is Alberto Begné Guerra. The Social Democratic and Peasants
Alliance brings together an unusual association of progresses intellectuals what one other
called “new age intellectuals” and peasants. So different mentalities soon produced
difficulties as the peasants wing of the party presented an alternative candidate. This
alternative candidate was disqualified by electoral authorities because he was not chosen
according to the statutes of the party, but the incident has created internal tensions between
the two wings of this political organization.
Official website: www.alternativa.org.mx
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