Mexico only allows presidential candidates to campaign for three months?!

That’s right. The campaign is conducted in three time periods. In the first, each political party selects its candidates. The second is a one-month period to investigate the people’s main concerns. In the last one — from March first to the June election — they tell the public, “I heard what you want, and I now have developed a program.” Only in these last three months can they go out and ask people for their votes.

Three candidates are running for president: Claudia Sheinbaum from Morena, Xóchitl Gálvez from the conservative PRI/PAN/PRD coalition, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez from the Movimiento Ciudadano party.

Parties are largely publicly financed. Does that make elections fairer? And what about media time?

The National Electoral Institute (INE) allocates public money to the parties for regular party business. The amount is proportional to the number of elected positions won in the last election. That, of course, favors the ruling party. The old PRI government invented the formula; they never expected an opposition party like Morena to benefit from that rule! The INE then allocates even more money specifically for electoral campaigns, not just for the president but also for governors, senators, representatives, and others.

INE organized in-person voting for 2023 in Canada and the US

 AMLO thought that spending so much government money was a waste, and he proposed to cut it, even though Morena would have been the loser. This kind of cut is what he means by “republican austerity.” But his proposal did not pass in Congress.

By law, the media must give equal time to the parties for 30% of the time; the other 70% is apportioned the same way as the funding. Of course, since the main media outlets are conservative, even though they must cover everyone, how they present them can still be slanted.

What’s the process for the national debates?

Citizens submitted 24,000 questions for the debate through social media. The INE hired a company to group them by category and to whittle them down to 108. The topics were health and education, corruption and transparency, violence against women and discrimination. The moderators chose the final 30 questions.

To ensure a variety of voices, they picked the questions from each of the three main regions of the country: the wealthier North, the more educated middle-class Central region, and the poorer South. But since many people aren’t comfortable with using social media, it’s not surprising that the questions from each region were pretty much the same, reflecting class and not region. For the second debate, questions will be collected on the streets, so we’ll see more regional differences.

In this debate, each candidate had one minute to put out a general statement in response to the main question, then another five minutes for more details and to respond to each other. They debated in three rounds, one for each topic, and then each had one minute for a final pitch. 

With this format and so little time to answer, all they could do was give sound bites. For example, one question was about femicides, but Claudia didn’t have time to explain the programs for women she put in place while mayor of Mexico City. Debate? Hardly. Because rather than presenting policy proposals, Xóchitl attacked Claudia personally, using her time on the clock to call her “cold and heartless, the ice lady.” That kind of talk wasn’t worth a response.

Could the public get a sense of their different visions for Mexico’s future? 

AMLO’s reforms have been so popular that it would have been suicidal for Gálvez or Máynez to disagree with them publicly. So, both Máynez and Gálvez said they would do the same things — only better! Both supported the universal scholarship programs for children and youth and the payments for the elderly put in place by AMLO. 

In the case of Gálvez, it’s on record that she opposed those same programs in Congress! So, now people see she’s a liar; you can’t trust what she says. Besides, how did she say she would improve the programs? By issuing a government-funded debit card to use not only at public health care facilities and schools but also at private institutions! A big boost for the profits of private enterprises, and a return to neoliberalism’s agenda of privatization. 

So, who won? 

photo: kk5hy, Storyblocks

After the debate, the polls showed no big changes; the results were predictable, with Claudia remaining about 20 points ahead of Gálvez.

I’d say the MC’s Máynez was the winner. He gained a few percentage points, from about 6% to 8% favorability. Because he knows that Claudia’s lead is solid, he was more interested in moving some votes from Xóchitl into his column — and maybe helping his party members gain seats in the down-ballot races.

The other winner? The Mexican public. In the past, Mexicans mainly just tuned in to soccer and soaps. Now, they are also watching the political debates. The Media Research Center reports that more than 11.8 million people watched the debate. YouTube had 823,000 Spanish language viewers, 9,800 Mayan, 15,000 Nahuatl, 34,700 in Tsotsil, and 164,3010 in Mexican Sign Language.

AMLO is right that the consciousness of the nation has changed (his mañaneras did a lot to educate the public). Ordinary people understand more about the choices they have and what a difference those choices can make in their daily lives. The kids watching the debate with their parents (Mexican families often watch TV together) will grow up able to rate candidates beyond how good-looking or entertaining they are. 

People will watch the second and third debates too. And this interest in politics is good for our country.