Stakes High as Cardenas Takes Office in Mexico City The stakes and expectations are high for the incoming three-year mayoral administration of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which took office in the Mexican capital on December 5. Fernando Zamora This is the highest office ever won by the opposition, and represents a major challenge for the parliamentary left: the PRD's ability to run local government, resolve pressing social problems and stimulate grassroots participation will now be put to the test.
Neither the Mexico City mayoral administration nor the city legislative assembly, where the PRD also has a majority, has many powers. The country's capital, is largely under the control of the federal government. Even in the best of circumstances, it would be difficult from city hall to modify the national neo-liberal economic policy of President Ernesto Zedillo and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
The problems of the world's largest city are daunting: poverty; growing crime, accompanied by rampant police corruption; an expanding informal economy that today represents 32% of the city's economic activity, and whose participants do not pay taxes or receive government social benefits; a 13 billion peso (US$ 1.63 bn.) debt, 80% of which was contracted under the previous PRI mayoral administration; a housing deficit estimated at one million units; a chaotic increasing insufficient public transportation; and a continual air pollution crisis, with only 27 days in the past year in which air quality was "good".
Voter expectations are high, according to a study released by the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation on December 2nd. Unemployment and crime were considered the new administration's top priorities, followed by corruption and poverty. About half the population, slightly above the 47 percent of the voters that elected him, expect the Cardenas administration to improve the city's problems, except in the case of air pollution, where most expect that the situation will remain the same, or worsen.
In the past few months, Cardenas' team and the PRD have sponsored a series of public forums attended by party activists, social leaders and experts at which proposals were presented to address these and other problems. While attendance at these forums was not massive, and was far from representing citizen participation, they were useful in airing many
Mexico * suggestions and bringing more expertise into the new mavor's team into the new mayor's team.
The problem will be to concretise many of the general programmatic and political points raised by the PRD during Its campaigns. Thus far, much of Cardenas' attention has been occupied with appointments. Marxist intellectual Adolfo Gilly was appointed head of the mayor's advisory council, and human rights leader Rosario Ibarra de Piedra has been named as his advisor on human rights issues. The new mayor has pledged that the military will no longer run public security in Mexico City and that corrupt elements will be purged from the police forces.
Heading Cardenas' call for a change in relations between government and society, as well as the effervescence that accompanied the victory in the July 6 elections, proposals have emerged in the PRD forums for creating city-wide organisational structures to stimulate citizen participation. A multitude of legal changes have been proposed to give juridical recognition to neighbourhood organisations such as civic and residents' associations. Putting them into practice is a task still pending.
Discussions are underway with nongovernmental organisations such as the Civic Alliance to establish neighbourhoodbased Public Affairs Offices to channel citizens' concerns, complaints and proposals to the proper authorities. The PRD is working to establish support structures for the new administration, as well as their own base committees, all on a neighbourhood level.
"We're striving for visible and forceful results in the first few months (in office), to consolidate this tremendous confidence among the citizens, this popular backing, so that they feel that there really are results and that it's necessary to maintain support" for the new administration, city hall Secretary General Rosario Robles told the daily La Jornada.
Within civil society, two broad and distinct perspectives are emerging on how to relate to the new PRD administration. Sectors closest to the PRD city leadership, under the banner of realism and responsibility, see the Cardenas administration as representing the "people in power" and have spoken of the need to limit mass mobilisations as a way of supporting the new mayor. Indeed, from January to October, 2,446 protest demonstrations were held in Mexico City, most against the city and federal governments.
Other forces, ranging from the far-left Independent Proletarian Movement and the Francisco Villa Popular Front to the Neighbourhood Assembly and other organisations comprising the urban popular movement, disagree. While supporting Cardenas' victory as part of the struggle for the transition to democracy, see the need to deepen and give organisational form to grass-roots participation, as vital to social change in general, and the new mayor's success in particular. These
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* Mexico groups, organised in the Metropolitan Convention, declare they will sponsor mobilisations if and when necessary.
The Cardenas administration faces two parallel dangers. A confrontation with the PRI and its corporatist structures among city workers, street vendors, etc., could provoke problems on different levels.
Veiled threats have already been issued, but given the ruling party's relative weakness and isolation in Mexico City, any concrete moves in this direction could easily backfire. The other potential danger flows from a permanent policy of negotiations with the powers-that-be. Given city hall's limited powers, this could constrict the mayor's actions to a very reduced spectrum of activities.
After being sworn in as mayor, Cardenas addressed tens of thousands of supporters in the central square in downtown Mexico City. He promised substantial changes in his three-year administration. In each of the city' s 16 delegations, centres for attending to women's issues and others focusing on children's cultural activities and the problem of street chil dren will be put into operation.
Special programmes will be designed for the half million Indians living in the city, based on respect for their customs and traditions. The new mayor also called for the federal government to absorb part of the city's debt.
Cardenas' victory and his record in office have and will mark a change in the overall political situation. Either there will be a major step forward in the process of democratic reorganisation or social demoralisation will set in, with negative consequences for some time to come. *
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