Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs

MEXICO: Millennium Development Goals – Political Cement?

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, May 23 2006 (IPS) - During the Vicente Fox administration, initiatives to obtain political agreement to reform Mexico’s economic and social structures have failed. Now, in the midst of an aggressive election campaign, another proposal has emerged, dangling the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as bait.

The U.N. delegation in Mexico interviewed 152 leaders from different areas of national life to publicise the MDGs and evaluate the prospects for a “dialogue for development” based on these concrete targets adopted by the international community in 2000.

“We found that the MDGs were potentially a cement that could bind the active elements of the country together. Our work might become the first step towards a national dialogue,” Thierry Lemaresquier, resident coordinator of U.N. agencies in Mexico, told IPS.

In this national consultation on the MDGs, the results of which were made public this month, most of those interviewed said that the goals generate consensus, and could be the starting point for a national agreement which could determine wide-ranging changes in the country.

In 2000, the U.N. General Assembly approved the eight overarching MDGs, based on 18 concrete aims, to be met by 2015. They include halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and with hunger, with respect to 1990 levels; achieving universal primary education; and reducing infant mortality by two-thirds, and maternal mortality by three-quarters.

The remaining goals are to promote gender equality, fight the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and create a global North-South partnership for development.

No one in Mexico objected when these commitments were signed. However, there are plainly difficulties in negotiating specific agreements to bolster the country’s development, according to the U.N. report.

The U.N. delegation attributes this to the institutional architecture of Mexican democracy, to “a political culture that is not very democratic,” and to the absence of arenas for “plural and inclusive dialogues that guarantee the participation of civil society,” among other reasons.

“Although a context of open conflict is not in evidence, national life is perceived as being excessively politicised, where the logic of special (economic and political) interests prevails over the collective interest. This happens in spite of the major overlap of interests that underlie the apparently contradictory positions of the different political agents,” the document adds.

According to Lemaresquier, “although the MDGs are somewhat technocratic in nature, they could become national aims, promoted by average citizens.”

“We know that electoral campaigns are not the best time to build consensus,” he acknowledged.

However, he said that the interviews conducted in Mexico showed that the MDGs could be a rallying force around which social actors could come together, and that they might generate agreements after the presidential elections. But whatever happens will depend on the participants, as the U.N. would only act as a facilitator, he stated.

The National Consultation on the MDGs was drawn up by U.N. interviewers and officials, who conducted personal, scripted interviews with every leader who agreed to participate.

Those interviewed were 36 “experts and opinion leaders,” 23 activists from “civil society organisations,” 16 governors, 17 leaders of trade unions, churches and rural workers’ groups, 14 legislators, 12 members of the business community, 11 mayors, 11 national government officials, four representatives of the media, five judges and three leaders of political parties.

Since the beginning of the year, Mexico has been in the throes of an intense political campaign for the Jul. 2 elections, in which Fox’s successor will be chosen.

Felipe Calderón of the conservative governing National Action Party is the front-runner in the polls, closely followed by Andrés López Obrador of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution.

The other candidates are Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country from 1929-2000, Patricia Mercado of the social democratic Alternativa, and Roberto Campa of New Alliance.

When Fox took office in December 2000 as the first non-PRI president in seven decades, he promised to create a process of dialogue to define routes toward development.

He proposed reforms to labour, energy, tax, criminal justice and electoral laws, and held forums about them as well as meetings with opposition politicians, academics and members of civil society. But none of these initiatives prospered.

Initiatives were also launched, unsuccessfully, by governors and civil society in attempts to overhaul the country’s institutional structures.

Some 300 leaders from the business, political, social and academic sectors signed the Chapultepec Accord last year, a list of good intentions in which adherents call for the consolidation of democracy and the promotion of the rule of law, and development with social justice, employment and economic growth.

The accord, the initiative of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, has not yet given rise to any concrete proposals that would entail political negotiations.

“People in Mexico feel that a national dialogue about the big challenges that the country faces is urgently needed. The main thing is to make good use of political timing to embark on a dialogue that is plural and inclusive,” Lemaresquier remarked.

In his view, the MDGs could become one of the main engines of that process.