And you thought George Bush was having a honeymoon.
Five months into the job, Mexican President Vicente Fox’s approval rating hovers around 65%. Just about everyone, even those who didn’t vote for him, seem to lend Fox support because of the dramatic change he represents.
After decades of one-party rule, Fox made history in December as the man who broke the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s 71-year grip on power in Mexico. In a country where only the rich and powerful once identified with presidents, everyday people see Fox, a former Coca Cola executive, as one of their own.
“He’s our first president,” said Ramon Alberto Garcia, owner of Delia’s Leather Designs store in Tijuana.
Garcia has seen as many as three other presidents in his lifetime,the last of the long-reigning PRI’s standard-bearers. But, like other Mexicans, he considers Fox the first head of state put into office by voters, rather than backroom manipulation or election hijinks.
Garcia’s comments were commonplace on a recent visit to Baja California, which has long been a stronghold of Fox’s center-right Partido Acci & #243;n Nacional, or National Action Party. In 1989, PAN won its first governorship in Baja,setting the stage for victories in other states, including in Guanajuato, where Fox became governor in 1995.
Early on, PAN was closely aligned with Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church. More recently, though, the party has become known as the “pothole party” for its focus on Mexico’s day-to-day problems. The now dethroned PRI, or Institutional Ruling Party, is discredited as corrupt and concerned only with Mexico’s power centers: oil and big industry.
Fox is working to undo PRI’s legacy. At the Secretariat of Economic Development in Tijuana, Oscar M. Arce wears a red and white sticker on his lapel that shows a bitten apple with a line through it. “Ya no mas mordidas,” it says, or no more bites, as Mexicans call bribes.
As the agency’s undersecretary, Arce is carrying the flag for a Fox public relations campaign that seeks to stamp out corruption. Across his offices in Tijuana’s business district, poster-size versions of his sticker hang on the walls. The scene is the same at Mexican customs offices at the Otay Mesa cargo border and at government offices across the country.
Fox’s familiarity with the U.S. and his obvious rapport with the new American president are being seen as pluses, too, enabling Fox to push for more liberal immigration policies and other measures that will benefit average Mexicans. By contrast, his predecessors were often perceived as cutting deals with Americans that benefited only the wealthiest of their countrymen.
But for Fox, looking good compared with his predecessors is the easy part. Fixes for deep-rooted problems could prove harder to come by. His anti-corruption campaign, while well-meaning, runs the risk of ringing hollow in a country where bureaucracy, low pay and drug money have made bribes all too common.
Fox’s approach to taxation is sophisticated and, to many Mexicans, bewildering. He’s seeking to extend a national sales tax to food and medicine, while rates on the richest Mexicans would be cut. So would corporate dividend taxes. The combination has irked some Mexicans and union leaders, who booed the president at a recent meeting.
Fox counters that his fiscal reforms will end government dependency on oil revenue and allow for increased spending on education, healthcare and much-needed loans to the poor. Still, his frank manner can be jarring to Mexicans used to patronizing evasiveness in their presidents.
Then there’s the economy. After a heady expansion last year, Mexico’s growth is expected to slow this year in lockstep with the U.S. In the first quarter, Mexico’s economy grew at a 2% trot, down sharply from last year’s 6% charge, fueled by exports to the U.S.
Fox originally was banking on 4.5% growth this year and formulated his budget accordingly. Now he’s slashed his full-year forecast to around 3%.
In Tijuana’s industrial parks, locals are feeling the pinch. After years of big foreign investment and virtually full employment, plants are closing. The slowing U.S. economy is a factor, but the real culprit is competition from China.
Even with the North American Free Trade Agreement, some Japanese electronics makers are finding cheap Asian labor an offer they can’t refuse. Sanyo Electric Co. recently closed a Tijuana appliance plant and moved production to China, Indonesia and Singapore. NEC Corp. and South Korea’s Daewoo Electronics Co. also have cut local production, while Sony Corp. also has scaled back operations (see related story, page 1).
While all this could hamstring a U.S. president, Fox is taking it all in stride. His approval rating is down a mere 5 percentage points from the 70% rating he saw early on. Fox’s real challenge is one of extremes: he’ll have to try and live up to the great expectations being heaped on him while disproving skeptics who believe Mexico is unchangeable.
But as Mexico’s first truly elected president, Fox could wind up benefiting from a play from the book of his U.S. counterpart, Bush: tackle the tough problems first, and,if you’re lucky,reap the benefits when it comes time to vote again.
Business Journal editor Lyster and reporter Chris Cziborr recently visited Tijuana for meetings with local officials and a tour of an electronics plant.
