From 1946 onwards, political parties had the exclusivity of nominating candidates for popularly-elected posts. The 2012 electoral reform broke with this tradition by modifying the 35th Constitutional article and establishing that “the right to request candidates’ registry before electoral authorities is the responsibility of political parties as well as citizens that request their registry in an independent candidacy and comply with the legislation’s requirements”. On July 7th, elections were held throughout 14 states but only two entities – Quintana Roo and Zacatecas – modified its electoral legislation for the reform to be enacted and thus, that independent candidates may be present at the ballot. At first glance, the Zacatecas case shows some interesting results. The triumph of the independent candidate Raúl de Luna Tovar in the mayor’s office of General Enrique Estrada who, according to PREP results, obtained 1,378 votes (defeating the PAN-PRD coalition, which had 1,110 and PRI with 431) allows us to reflect upon the importance and impact of these kinds of mechanisms in Mexican politics.
The concept of open democracy opens up spaces for a broader participation of citizens in political decision-making and revitalizes the vilified structure of parties that, according to Transparency International, 91% of Mexicans consider them to be corrupt. Independent candidacies enhance plurality in election proposals given that they’re not bound to partisan interests and can introduce new issues into the public debate. Besides, they can also attack apathy and abstention (which rose to 60%) by boosting a greater citizen participation due that these candidates need of a close collaboration with the community that they would represent given that they need to gather a minimum number of signatures in order to obtain the individual registration. Likewise, they can become an alternative that captures the vote of those that do not feel represented by any party, thereby reducing blank votes and abstention.
Despite these benefits, independent candidacies may be vulnerable to several threats. On one hand, these candidacies may lose its independent status if captured by party members, patronage networks or criminal organizations, which may wave a false citizen flag and will respond to different interests of civil society. The case of the Zacatecas winner is evidence that legitimizes this suspicion, given that Raúl De Luna Tovar was the PAN Municipal President in 2008-2010. Politics is not an unfamiliar territory for him and enables people to question how truly independent the new mayor De Luna is. On the other hand, independent candidacies would become irrelevant if they are over-regulated. By not having a secondary federal legislation, its rules depend of states, which is why it’s important to keep an eye on these legislations in order to maintain their equality and viability. It should be avoided to turn them into inoperative through impossible demands such as overly high number of signatures, a lack of transparency in its financial system and confuse accountability. In addition, a certain level of equality among independent candidates and parties should be sought in order to not turn competition into a simulation.
Independent candidates are an answer to the political parties’ smear among citizens. They offer spaces, previously reserved for parties, for those that do not agree with a “party-ocracy” and electoral offers. Nevertheless, it is important to adequately value the approach of these direct democracy mechanisms, they cannot be mistaken as the ultimate solution to a series of faults in our democracy when in reality they are not. Independent candidacies ought to be appreciated as a political right that complements the participation capacity within democracy and as every right it requires a certain degree of responsibility of society in order to be consciously exercised.
CIDAC
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