Bush vs. Kerry, Mexico style

Which presidential candidate can save Mexico? Ask here and you get the same answer: "He was assassinated in 1994.’’ People still speak with reverence about Luis Donaldo Colosio, who was gunned down in cold blood in Tijuana during a campaign appearance. Though the gunman is in prison and claims to have worked alone, speculation still abounds that Colosio’s death was ordered by his own party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and even former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Colosio had been campaigning about justice and reform and was also considered to be tough with drug cartels. If you look at Mexico’s history with drug lords under Salinas and his successor, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, dios mio!
While comparisons have been drawn between Colosio and John F. Kennedy, the election this time is pure Bush vs. Kerry.
Political cynicism is waist-deep. I’ve heard Californians of the left persuasion talk about PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, former president of Mexico City, as the man who will finally help Mexico’s poor. According to conversations over the last three and half weeks in Oaxaca, the country’s second-poorest state, not many here think so.
They don’t like any candidate. And despite massive reforms in the voting system after 1988, when Salinas stole the election from Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas, many wonder if the declared winner of July 2 presidential election will be the person who got the most votes.
There are many debates in living rooms, teachers' lounges and other casual settings. Many hate PRI and say PAN, the party of current President Vicente Fox, who ended PRI’s 71-year rule in 2000, has done nothing. So they support Lopez Obrador. Others say no one can change a country as complicated and corrupt as Mexico in six years and that Fox’s party should be given another term to continue its reforms. Others liked Lopez Obrador as mayor, but are nervous now by the fact that he’s surrounding himself with some of the old-time PRI folks as advisors.
The comment I’ve heard most is that people will go to the polls on July 2 and vote for the “menos peor”, the least dislikable. Some say they will vote with their feet – by not showing up. Some polls indicate a turnout rate of less than 50 percent of eligible voters.
Sound familiar?