'Mexico's Elections - Politics as Usual?'
Although it has been reiterated here often that stereotypes and broad categorizations of people and events are not good things, some stereotypes reassert themselves without effort to prevent aversion. Mexican politics is one of those stereotypes.
Although nominally a democracy simply because elections are held at regular intervals, for more than seventy years Mexico was a one-party state. In 2000 the voters changed that by electing Vicente Fox as President. Mr. Fox leads the PAN Party, which for all its existence had been the main opposition bloc to the well-oiled PRI Party political machine.
From a distance it seemed Mr. Fox would be a successful leader. He collaborated with the US to develop "guest worker" agreements, e.g. a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for illegal immigrants. The Fox government went to such an extent to aid these "guests" that an agency was tasked with providing these would-be border crossers with travel kits. The kits include asprin, water, packaged food, and a supply of condoms. When a journalist asked specifically about the condoms, Mr. Fox replied: "We want to protect our people".
But soon it was Mr. Fox who needed a rather different sort of protection. The PAN lacked the broad base of public support and the public relations skills of the PRI. After the mid-term election, Mr. Fox leads a minority government. In other words, he will need to adopt many of the PRI policies he once vigorously opposed. Given its long tradition of alternating liberal and conservative leaders, the PRI may quietly adopt PAN policies as a convenience to itself. Either way it will lead to a three year process that will play directly to those who perceive Mexican politics and Mexico in general as more than loaded with corruption.
'The Angry Bankers'
The "Stability Pact" European finance ministers created to ease the introduction of the euro perhaps should be renamed the "Instability Pact". Some euro-zone members simply refuse to obey the Pact rules. France in particular has done some interesting "fuzzy math" in its reports to the ECB. For the last three reporting periods, France has been unable to comply with the Pact's constraints regarding budget deficits. The situation has degraded to the juncture that at a recent euro-zone finance ministers' meeting, the French representative was on the receiving end of some rather harsh tellings-off. The rapidly emerging reality among some member states is: "If France can flex the rules, so can we". This has led to questions of the reports from Italy and Spain who asked the ECB for waivers of compliance. France neither asked for nor received such a waiver, but it continues to flaunt its non-compliance. The ECB and many private European banks whose practices follow the ECB's lead are deeply offended by France's arrogance, and none of them hesitated to let the French finance minister know their sentiments.
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