Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO: It’s Raining Political Ads

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, May 30 2006 (IPS) - In what analysts are criticising as the commercialisation of the electoral process, Mexico’s politicians have all but taken over the country’s airwaves. Since Jan. 1, they have bombarded three cities with more than 90,000 campaign spots.

As of May 19, the country’s presidential candidates had racked up 600 radio and television hours, through the placement of 93,103 political ads paid by parties registered for the upcoming Jul. 2 elections.

According to estimates by media watchdog Verificación y Monitoreo, the parties have sunk approximately 76 million dollars into ads aired in Mexico City, Guadalajara (in the centre of the country) and Monterrey (in the north). The bulk of the money has come from the public coffers.

As a result, radio and television have taken the place of public squares, once the traditional setting for electoral campaigns.

This year’s campaign style is a much closer cousin to those typical of other Western democracies, where the “media are the public spaces favoured by politicians,” Horacio Medrano, a political scientist with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told IPS. “We are definitely experiencing very ad-focused elections.”

Spots are usually 15 to 30 seconds of appeals to voter emotion and insults for opposing candidates, frequently devoid of any kind of policy platform.

According to Verificación y Monitoreo, 3.6 percent of the ads were broadcast on national free-to-air TV channels, 2.7 percent on local TV channels, 8.6 percent on cable TV channels and 84.9 percent on radio stations.

The top two contenders to replace President Vicente Fox, whose six-year term ends in December, are Felipe Calderón of the conservative governing National Action Party (PAN), and Andrés López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

They, along with Roberto Madrazo, candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – which governed for 71 years before being bumped by PAN in 2000 – star in most of the ads broadcast this year.

Despite his media push, opinion polls still show Madrazo as a long-shot. Also low in the polls are candidates Patricia Mercado, of the Social Democratic and Farmer Alternative Party, and Roberto Campa, of the New Alliance Party.

With the campaign focus “on media attention, Mexican politics has officially moved from class struggle to sound-bite wars,” observed political pundit Sabino Bastidas, a columnist with the daily Excelsior newspaper and analyst for the Monitor radio station..

“The president of employment” is how current frontrunner Calderón bills himself, while “For the good of all, first the poor,” is the slogan of López Obrador, who is close on his heels.

PAN messages promote its candidate, but also target López Obrador, calling him “a danger to Mexico.” On May 23, the Independent Federal Elections Tribunal declared this barb defamatory and ordered the ad pulled.

PRD spots counter with accusations that Calderón has “dirty hands” and is a “liar.” PAN has likewise demanded the withdrawal of these ads, but the Tribunal has not ruled on the request.

“This campaign will be won by the party whose publicity resonates most with voters,” said Carlos Alazraki, a publicist for Madrazo.

Analyst Medrano noted that, while the media wield powerful influence, other considerations also play significant roles in swaying voters.

“Media campaigns are a huge factor, but other elements, such as credibility, overall campaign design, history, party structure and policy platforms are also important in some social sectors,” he explained.

The presidential and legislative elections are costing the State some 1.2 billion dollars, 40 percent of which goes to registered parties. The remainder finances the electoral bodies and the organisation of the elections.

Parties fund their campaigns with a combination of state resources and private donations; the latter may not exceed the state’s contribution.

According to Federal Election Institute calculations, 60 to 70 percent of Mexican political-party funds are spent on media publicity, particularly TV spots.

The heavy-duty advertising campaigns debuted in the 2000 elections, which brought Fox to the presidency and ended the PRI’s decades-long grip on the federal government.

At that time, Fox was driven by an unprecedented – for Mexico – campaign strategy crafted by poll experts and image consultants, many of whom were from the United States.

The 2000 elections were also the first to incorporate independent electoral authorities and judges. Until 1994, when Ernesto Zedillo (of the PRI) was elected, these authorities were overseen by the executive branch.

The new electoral-authority independence radically transformed political customs, particularly those of the media, which in the past had tended to openly support the incumbent party and give little coverage to the opposition.

Hence, the exponential increase in political ads jamming radio and television airwaves.