Why is Pena Nieto not smiling?

By Carlos Ramirez

At first glance, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is the clear winner of Mexico’s July 1 presidential election. But a closer look at the results reveals a more muddled picture. On the surface, the PRI certainly came out ahead: After 12 years in opposition, Mexico’s once-hegemonic power reclaimed the presidency and engineered a strong congressional coalition. Also, when Enrique Pena Nieto is inaugurated on December 1, the party will have governors in place in 22 states and control of a majority of state legislatures. Meanwhile, the PRI’s main rival, the currently ruling National Action Party (PAN), fielded a third-place presidential candidate, lost control of the key states of Jalisco and Morelos, and saw itself reduced to the third-largest party in the lower house of congress.

The PRI’s pick-ups and the PAN’s failure to retain the presidency were largely predicted in the weeks preceding the election. What came as a surprise was Pena Nieto’s inability to reach the critical 42 percent threshold of total votes, which translated into a weaker performance for the PRI in the congressional races. The party failed to achieve working majorities in both chambers, and the outcome fell far short of the PRI’s expectations-especially in the senate, whose members are elected every six years. So in a dramatic turn of events, Pena Nieto will assume the presidency but will have to depend on legislative support from the PAN to secure his agenda.

The electoral outcome has damaged the center-right PAN, but it does have this one lifeline. As a pivotal party in congress, it will be the only powerbroker with which the PRI will be able to negotiate structural reforms. This is the inverse result of the 2006 election, which may provide some consolation to PANistas who watched the policies of outgoing president Felipe Calderon repeatedly held up by the PRI over the past six years. This time, it is the PRI that will be tied to the PAN for the entirety of the Pena Nieto administration.

This ironic turn of events clearly was not part of the PRI’s plan. Pena Nieto intended, after winning by a double-digit margin and capturing both chambers, to propose moving forward on many long-stalled reforms, to secure congressional approval with or without PAN support, and to avoid having to undermine the vested interests that make up his constituency. The goal was to demonstrate the PRI’s effectiveness from the outset and achieve solid results. The Mexican public, in turn, would see 12 long years of obstructionism and stalled reforms quickly vanish. But that plan collapsed last weekend.

So why, exactly, is the outcome so bad for the PRI? From a business perspective, it seems reasonable that the PRI and the PAN would come together to enact needed reforms. According to Pena Nieto and his advisers, the PRI is pursuing the same reforms that the PAN tried (and failed) to pass during the Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Calderon (2006-2012) administrations: fundamental changes in the areas of labor, fiscal policy, energy, and competition. The PAN has no deep-seated ideological opposition to any of these (unlike the other major party, the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD). And it does not have strong ties to the groups with an interest in maintaining the status quo. Conventional wisdom, therefore, would say that Pena Nieto will find a way to get the PAN on board to pass the relevant legislation.

It is not that simple, however. If the PAN learns from its historic defeat, it will quickly come to terms with the fact that it now has a golden opportunity over the next six years to push for a much deeper transformation of Mexico’s political and economic landscape. In particular, the PAN can offer support for the PRI’s structural reforms in exchange for dismantling the vestiges of the old PRI-led corporatist coalition that survived Mexico’s transition to democracy. (The PAN struggled against this coalition during its 12 years in the presidential residence.)

Accomplishing such a feat is a pretty straight-forward task, as there is no shortage of issues on which the PAN can seek concessions in exchange for supporting reforms. The list is large — underscoring the many problems left untouched during the past dozen years-but certainly achievable. Here are some of the topics that could be up for negotiation:

• Changes to the political regime: Allowing legislators and municipal presidents to be reelected, instituting a second round in presidential elections;
• Improved governance: Reforming Mexico’s dysfunctional federalist arrangement, seeking to reduce the power of unions in the education system and within the public sector-bureaucrats, oil company Pemex, and the Social Security Institute, for instance-by mandating transparency and democracy within them;
• Macroeconomic reforms: Limiting the capacity of governors to go into debt and making them more accountable for expenditures, forcing state governors to keep transparent fiscal accounts, reforming Mexico’s various broken pension systems;
• Changes to the energy sector: Allowing risk-sharing contracts in the oil sector and preparing Pemex for a future stock float, opening the refining and petrochemical sectors; and
• Enhancing competition: Strengthening the power of the regulatory agencies including the Federal Commission of Telecommunications and the Banking Commission.

There is no question that the PAN will support these structural improvements. After all, the party’s only chance of returning to power relatively quickly is if Mexico breaks with its corporatist past and modernizes at a faster pace. The real question is whether Pena Nieto is serious about enacting real change-serious enough that he is willing to defy the rent-seeking coalition that backs him. If he is truly committed to advancing reforms (and is ready for the epic, vociferous resistance sure to emanate both from within his own party and from the PRD), then Pena Nieto might succeed in becoming the first president to usher in a historic transformation. In that scenario, the country will have undergone unprecedented economic reforms during his administration and will function in 2018 within a renovated institutional framework that empowers Mexicans to reach their real potential. If, however, Pena Nieto is not committed enough — if he ends up preferring accommodation rather than transformation, and if the dead weight of the PRI’s past prevails once again — then Mexico will remain condemned to the same mediocre performance witnessed over the past decade.

The stakes for Pena Nieto are clear. Will Mexico’s new president be transformational, or will he prefer to continue playing the role of a soap-opera actor? Like Mexico’s famed telenovelas, the election had a surprise ending.

Carlos Ramirez is an analyst in Eurasia Group’s Latin America practice.