MEXICO CITY — Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party dismissed its congressional leader late Monday, reducing the already slim chances that President Vicente Fox's reforms will pass legislative muster. And analysts say that's bad news for Mexico's languishing economy.
Perceived as a rising power broker just weeks ago, Elba Esther Gordillo was voted out as legislative coordinator at a council meeting of PRI mayors, state governors and members of Congress. Many complained that she had become too close an ally of the National Action Party's Fox in his efforts to tweak the tax system and open up the electricity sector to private investment.
Gordillo's dismissal is the latest chapter in an ongoing power struggle within the PRI, which has been seeking to redefine itself since it lost its 71-year grip on the Mexican presidency to Fox in 2000. The leadership crisis has unsettled the financial markets, with the peso hitting 52-week lows against the dollar.
"This shows the pulverization of the PRI. That creates a huge territory for uncertainty, which is what markets don't like," said Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, a Mexico City political scientist and newspaper columnist.
Numerous economists say reforms are essential if Mexico is to emerge from its three-year economic malaise and, in the longer term, regain competitiveness on the global scene. But Fox's slate of ambitious reforms has hit a wall in Congress because of the opposition of the PRI, which holds a plurality of seats.
After taking charge as legislative coordinator, Gordillo expressed a willingness to work with Fox. But she didn't have the full backing of her party; the vote to dismiss her was 69 to 28, with five abstentions.
Although intraparty opposition to her leadership had been mounting, the final straw was a Gordillo proposal last month favoring a new 10% value-added tax. To the minds of some PRI deputies, it was too similar to a Fox proposal.
"The coordinator tried to submit her responsibility to the goals of Fox and his machine. What happened last night was a recovery of the PRI of its social goals," said Angel Buendia Tirado, a PRI member who holds a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, Congress' lower house.
Chamber of Deputies member Jorge Romero Romero, however, expressed the outrage felt by many Gordillo supporters at her "illegal" ouster, saying that efforts to reach bipartisan solutions on badly needed reforms had been short-circuited by the party's power struggle. For that, he blamed PRI President Roberto Madrazo, who presided at the council meeting.
