On May 19th, for the first time in its history, the National Action Party (PAN) held an open election for its members to appoint a party leader. With the 56.76 percentage of votes, Gustavo Madero was reelected and will begin his second term as head of the right-wing party. However, PAN’s inner struggle showed a party structure that is weak and has a lot of things to improve. In order to understand the full scenario it is worth reflecting: what are the consequences of this open election and how does it outline PAN’s future?
Firstly, it is not clear that the reform undertaken by PAN in 2013 that extends the voting for its leadership to all of its members was of any help for the party but, rather presented a compromising scenario for its political future. The “new” PAN leader, after associating himself with the Pact for Mexico, used all resources available in order to maintain a leading position in the election, something that, instead of strengthening democracy within the party, ended up showing an unequal competition.
Even more so, the election results also remarked that, although Madero ended up as party leader, 4 out every 10 PAN members disapprove of his tenure and that Ernesto Cordero was the preferred candidate in two states – Querétaro and San Luis Potosí – where Governor elections will be held and where the party has a real chance of regaining power. With all that into account, in democracy winners are still winners and Madero obtained enough votes to act with full legitimacy.
If that wasn’t enough, general perception of the population has deteriorated due to two months of accusations and personal attacks from both candidates, along with corruption scandals at the inside of the party. PAN had distinguished itself from putting into practice values such as honesty and coherence, both of which were absent during the two administrations that the party occupied the Mexican Presidency.
Although the tenure of Gustavo Madero as PAN leader will be relatively short (one year and a half), it will be an important time for the party to build alliances and recover political capital. There are currently some pending issues such as the secondary legislation of the 2013 reforms, as well the negotiations of the fiscal package of the coming year, which may be reflected in an increase of PAN legislators for the 2015 mid-term elections. In addition, 2015 will also be the year where Governor elections will be held in Nuevo León, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí, states in which PAN may recover some political territory.
The unavoidable duty that Madero has to undertake is reunifying the party in order to make the best use of opportunities and strengthen itself towards 2015. Despite that it remains controlling the resources of the party, Cordero’s allies should participate in the dialogue given the enormous importance that this faction still holds at the Senate. Nevertheless, the renewed leadership after the elections will hardly translate into a change of its political strategy; the most likely outcome is that the same faces and fewer agreements between the party’s factions will continue. As of now, the question that remains is: what is Madero’s strategy to reconcile the members of an irretrievably broken party?
CIDAC
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