Monday, August 01, 2005

The PRI and TUCOM

This is an overdue post. Although TUCOM brings to mind images of talking birds hawking breakfast cereal, it really stands for Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo and its a political craze sweeping the nation. Well, maybe not exactly, but close.

Madrazo is the President of the PRI and will be one of the leading contenders for the PRI nomination for President in 2006. TUCOM (All United against Madrazo) is an alliance of other would-be PRI candidates who have banded together to stop Madrazo from becoming the PRI's next candidate. They either believe that Madrazo would be bad for the PRI in general, or that one of them is more likely to be a successful candidate in 2006. The five members of Tucom are: Enrique Jackson, Arturo Montiel, Tomás Yarrington, Enrique Martínez y Manuel Angel Núñez Soto.



This alliance has been around for a month now, but actual activities or agreements have been few because of such great uncertainty within the party. Initially, the members of the alliance agreed not to attack one another and instead focus their energies on defeating Madrazo. So here's the news round-up of Tucom activities over the last month or so:

July 14: Tucom announces that it will confer with Gordillo before announcing who will run against Madrazo for the PRI nomination. Gordillo is the 2nd in command at the PRI and will become President of the PRI when Madrazo steps down to run for the presidential nomination. She's a polarizing figure in her own right, as leader of the teacher's union.

One of the key movers behind the Tucom alliance is Genero Borego, who was director of the Social Security Institute when pensions were privatized in 1995 and was once a presidential candidate hopeful himself. He says that a PRI win is not guaranteed even with Gordillo's support (read: Gordillo can't bring the teacher vote like she once could). [Note: Gordillo and Madrazo are fairly bitter political enemies. Come to think of it, Gordillo is enemies with many other powerful men as well.]

Two articles about the divisions within the PRI in mid-July.

July 16: A new political party, Nueva Alianza, celebrates its formal registration. Though the party is associated with the teachers' union led by Gordillo, she stands up everybody at the formal announcement of the party.

July 27: Stress begins to appear within the Tucom alliance. According to the article, surveys don't indicate a clear winner among the Tucom candidates, and the alliance is considering putting forward two of the five to face off with Madrazo.

"Existe preocupación entre las empresas encuestadoras -seleccionadas por Unidad Democrática para elegir al candidato que contenderá en contra de Madrazo- para ubicar a los mil 400 notables que conforman una cuarta parte del ejercicio de auscultación planteado, porque buena parte de ellos están de vacaciones, y en el mejor de los casos podrán ubicar a 35 o 40 por ciento de ellos, lo que impide dar plena legitimidad a este proceso dentro de Unidad Democrática", revelaron fuentes de dicha agrupación de priístas que integran los gobernadores Arturo Montiel, del estado de México, y Enrique Martínez, de Coahuila; los ex mandatarios estatales Tomás Yarrington, de Tamaulipas, y Manuel Angel Núñez Soto, de Hidalgo, así como el senador Enrique Jackson.

A esta problemática operativa se suma la lucha que por esta candidatura protagonizan Montiel y Jackson, lo que hace pensar a los propios integrantes de Unidad Democrática que pudiera llegar a registrarse más de uno de ellos para enfrentar a Madrazo en la selección interna del tricolor, lo que implicaría, además, romper el acuerdo original de consensuar una sola propuesta en este grupo antagónico al dirigente nacional del PRI.

July 31: Unconfirmed reports suggest that Gordillo met with members of Tucom to discuss strategies.

The story was accompanied by this unflattering depiction of La Maestra (the Teacher), as she is commonly called.

Original context

August 1: Tucom has agreed to suspend television ads until they agree on their candidate to face Madrazo.

In any event, it will be interesting to watch the Tucom movement unfold. It's like having a mini-election before the election of the PRI nominee. The actual nomination process is only open to PRI members, since as one interviewee told me, they would otherwise risk sabotage by individuals voting for the worst candidate. [Paranoid much?] We'll see if it actually gives any more legitimacy to the Tucom candidate and whether it will convince Madrazo supporters within the PRI to back down and not impose Madrazo as the party's nominee.

To be continued....

posted by Michelle @ 8:16 PM,

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