Candidate fights tarnish of party
MEXICO CITY — Jose Antonio Meade’s race for Mexico’s presidency so far has looked more like a slog through mud — a struggle to free himself from the scandal-stained reputation of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party that chose the seemingly apolitical economist as its standardbearer.
A string of governors from the party have been imprisoned — some after fleeing the country as fugitives — or are under investigation for corruption, and many Mexicans blame the party known as the PRI for failing to halt the growth of violence across much of the country.
Meade, a man who has worked in the Cabinet for presidents of two different parties, is stressing his own, relatively untarnished record.
“I’m the candidate,” he said in an interview. “And there is not just the perception, but the certainty of 20 years of an honest and transparent life and an honorable trajectory.”
So far, with the election three months away, that hasn’t been enough. Nearly all polls say Meade is running third, favored by less than 20 percent of likely voters.
“Mexico’s long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party is now so linked with corruption that it may be hobbled in the 2018 national elections,” the U.S. Congressional Research Service wrote in a recent analysis.
Meade argues that all the country’s parties have a similar bad image and says he is the bestequipped candidate to tackle corruption. He has proposed eliminating presidents’ immunity against prosecution, increasing the autonomy of the Attorney General’s Office and seizing the property of politicians found to be corrupt.
“To take on corruption what we have to do is give more tools to the government, and the only one who has put forward a serious proposal about this topic is me,” Meade said.
This is the first time that the PRI, the dominant force in Mexican politics for most of the past century, has named a non-member as its presidential candidate. The choice was widely seen as the only good option for a party tainted by scandals.
It’s also the first time Meade, 49, has run for public office, though his father — also a longtime government administrator — served a term in congress for the PRI.
The lack of stumpspeech experience shows. His speaking style often reflects his policy wonk background as a Yaleeducated economist who also has a law degree.
Meade served in a series of bureaucratic posts before joining the Cabinet of President Felipe Calderon, a member of the conservative National Action Party, as energy secretary in 2011 and as treasury secretary a year later. Incoming PRI President Enrique Peña Nieto kept Meade on as the head of foreign affairs, then social services, and finally the treasury again.
If he wins, Meade said, he will seek dialogue at all levels of government to preserve a relationship with the U.S. that is deeper than many believe and that goes beyond topics such as the current renegotiation of NAFTA, which Trump has said is unfair to the U.S.