They are digging their own grave

The defeat suffered by the Revolutionary institutional party last July has not been enough to make the party leaders reflex on what they have been doing. The party is still the largest political organization in the country, it has 60 seats in the Senate and 208 in the chamber of deputies, a majority of governors and, by far, it is the party with the most number of mayors throughout Mexico.

Despite all that, is very common to state that the PRI is living its final days. It is not a hopeful comment by people who remember the state party era, it is a prediction that is made by observing the attitudes taken in the past weeks by distinguished party members.

Victor Cervera Pacheco, governor of the southeastern state of Yucatán is the symbol of everything that was repudiated by society in the last election. Over more than three decades Cervera has imposed himself as a "cacique." The term is used in Mexican politics to describe the person who holds power in a certain state.

Cervera has appointed and removed governors in the past, he has held control of local elections and he has certainly held in his grip the state legislature. In the 1980's, he was governor himself when he forced the elected governor to resign, and in 1995, he felt like being governor again, except that the state and federal constitutions had something to say about that. He simply changed the state constitution and ignored the federal constitution, which states that a person cannot be governor for more that 6 years. When he finishes his second term in 2001, he will be the only man since the era of Porfirio Diaz to be governor more that 6 years.

Now the PRI is looking at this man's actions as something to be proud of because he has defied President Fox's government by rejecting a mandate from the Supreme electoral court. The former state party is lost, without direction they look for a strong leader, Cervera is, certainly, a strong man, but he is also the kind of man that provoked Labastida's defeat last summer.

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