Like an unedited event, the electoral process in Chiapas lived the past August 20th. The questions that we have at the national level arising from the change in presidential politics, we have at the state level too: What will be the changes that a government other than the PRI will offer? Will the previous candidate and now new governor vary his discourse and actions? Will he fulfill his campaign promises? What effects will there be in the PRI, other parties and sectors of society in Chiapas? What conditions will the new government require to govern? How will the new government team be formed and what repercussions will this have? To what extent will the new state government influence issues of a federal nature?  These are but a few amongst many questions.

Among the characteristics and contexts that make this electoral process an important event for the state and the country are the following:

1) In spite of electoral fraud, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) lost the State governorship after decades of maintaining power.

2) For the first time the PRI contended with an Alianza Opositora (Opposition Alliance) made up of 8 parties.

3) For more than 170 years, Chiapas had counted on an average of one governor a year which reflected, amongst other things, a lack of democracy, the imposition of governments, and the absence of government projects over the long term. Since the surge in armed conflict in 1994 with the Zapatista uprising, there have been 7 governors in the state: Patrocinio Gonzalez Garrido, Elmar Setzer, Javier Lopez Moreno, Eduardo Robledo Rincon, Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro, Roberto Albores Guillen and Amado Avendano as Governor in Rebellion. Now, with the triumph of Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia, the hope is that he will be able to govern for 6 years.

4) Chiapas is the poorest and most marginalized state in the country, with the highest rates of poverty, military presence, number of paramilitary groups, displaced populations, violence, deaths, and impunity.

5) In Chiapas, the EZLN waits for the fulfillment of the San Andres Accords and the conditions necessary for the re-establishment of the unfinished dialogue.

6) Finally, there is a legitimate government.

Pablo Salazar agrees to gover the state in such a way that  his administration will achieve a legitimacy that no governor in the previous decades has had. Nonetheless, there are two additional indispensable elements of a good government: achieving credibility among the diverse sectors of the state by fulfilling campaign promises, and, carrying out political and economic projects through hegemony, or, governing by consensus.

New proposals of a constitutional character that relate to Legislative power of the Local Congress, could be blocked by the majority of deputies of the PRI that remain until the next elections in 2001. Among these elements, we point out:

1) The counterinsurgent Remunicipalization process imposed by interim governor Roberto Albores, who is attempting to create more than 30 municipalities, the majority of which are enclaves in the regions where the Zapatistas are carrying out a process of creating autonomous municipalities. The process has been carried out without consensus, in a unilateral and ineffective way, as well as under illegal procedures.

2) The Law of Indigenous Rights and Culture in Chiapas already approved by the Local Congress without intervening the fulfillment of the San Andres Accords on the matter at the federal level.

3) The proposal for annual incomes of the State that involves the definition about the fiscal reform and the public debt with the bank and the federation, among other elements. In the same way, the proposal of annual expenses upon which depend the agreements made with various productive sectors of the state , the possible supports and subsidies, the distribution of resources for political bodies, education, health, etc.

The defeat of the PRI at the national and state level will mean a necessary internal breakdown with competition for control and leadership, disqualifications and violent conflicts. These outbreaks of violence have already been observed in various points in the Norte (North), Altos (Highlands), and Selva (Jungle) zones.

This defeat is provoking many fissures and opportunism by militants who now join different parties. As is seen at the national level, the PRI in the state are found confused and tend to appear like zombis, that is the unique way that it can resuscitate itself if it does not change from the roots, and whose ghost can wander in society but not for it will be less dangerous (zombi, according to the Larousse dictionary, means the ‘serpent god in the voodoo cult, with the capacity to return to live as a skeleton. A dead being resuscitated by a witchdoctor to have at his service”).

The arrival of the new government will mean a change of many actors in Chiapas. The media, previously controlled by the PRI from the state government, will be able to experience important changers. The same applies for the farming, worker, magisterial, and bureaucratic sectors which have traditionally manipulated and corporatized by the state apparatus. Society also hopes that the impunity and corruption that has characterized the government will noticeably diminish; the same with the political and electoral use of public resources meant for the fight against poverty.

Farmer and indigenous organizations will be hoping for a new relationship with the government, including an end to violent expulsions from their land with the use of public forces and the diminishment of political-military operations in indigenous regions.

Governability and the state of the law should be based on respect of human rights manifested in the Political Constitution, reviving the right to freedom of movement that the military, police, and paramilitaries have impeded through checkpoints and harrassment; the right to free religious expression all the time that the paramilitaries have burnt, profaned or closed Catholic temples; the right to housing, health, education when thousands of displaced indigenous people in the state in conditions of extreme poverty, among others.

The promises of Pablo Salazar along the lines of including new democratic institutional forms, like plebiscites and referendums, will allow for the strengthening of the participation of sectors of society in the new government. However, another large challenge for the new governor will be the determination of his new government team since, as was seen during his campaign, the Alianza Opositora did  not include the distribution of positions in the structure of the state for the political parties, that which does not mean that these will demand their quota of power by carrying it to governance.

The invitation of Pablo Salazar for civil society, including members of civil organizations, to join his government team, must be well thought-out. The administration of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in Mexico City included members of these organizations and for many, the experience was not positive, and, the majority returned from where they came. The reason for this is that it is different from being part of civil society organized against the government and obligated to comply with unjust laws that the PRI created in its last  decades in the areas of the prosecution of justice, economy and society.

Nonetheless, the political changes do not guarantee economic development, especially for the poorest sectors of Chiapas. The state is not seperated from federal politics and structures, thus, all is not in the hands of Pablo Salazar. For example:

1) The fulfillment of the San Andres Accords signed between the EZLN and the federal government, along with generating conditions of confidence and credibility for re-initiating the dialogue for peace.

2) Militarization and the withdrawal of federal troops from the Mexican army, all the time that although a government sovereign over the federation, the army depends on the Supreme Commander: the president of the Republic.

3) Proposals for a solution to the current crisis in farm products, like coffee and corn, amongst other products and sectors, while the freeing-up of prices, the end of subsidies and the commercial liberalization are determined by the federal Congress of the Union.

4) The Zapatista prisoners kept in various prisons in the state and the application of justice to paramilitary groups come within federal jurisdiction, and are not crimes within community jurisdiction.

One of the largest dangers is that the new federal and state governments, as well as various sectors of civil society, will recreate the same discourse as in the past regarding the situation of armed conflict. Already the drums that sing the victory of democracy before the mera presidential and state political alteration, and that as a consequence demands the EZLN disarm and negotiate, as if the causes that provoked the armed uprising have automatically disappeared. The political prisoners remain incarcerated, the paramilitaries still enjoy impunity, the military continues to grow and harrass, the displaced continue to survive, hunger and misery continue to destroy.

In this transition period, the political changes oblige political parties, social organizations of all kinds, as well as all of society, to redefine their position and their diagnosis of the situation in the country. Similarly, when the EZLN returns to public communication, it will obligate everyone to replan, strengthen or vary the diagnosis.

POWERS AND OBLIGATIONS OF THE GOVERNOR

Article 42 of the Political Constitution of the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas reads as follows:

I. Promulgate and execute the laws and decrees that the State Congress issues, providing in the administrative sphere to its faithful observation; execute the administrative acts that the State executive entrusts the federal laws;

II. Maintain political relations with the Federal Government and with the organs of the Government of the other States of the Federation;

III. Seek the protection of the Forces of the Union in case of revolt or internal disorder;

IV. Ensure that the public funds in every way are well-secured and its collection and distribution are done according to the law;

V. Grant to particulares, through concessions for the exploitation of goods of the property of the State, or the benefits of public services when with the agreement (in accordance with) of the applicable legislation;

VI. Promote by all means possible popular education and procure social advancement and improvement and provide, execute, and agree to fulfil all types of moral and material improvements to the benefit of or interest of the collective.

Public works will be carried out by the Executive Power, itself or by awarding by competition, through notice, within the boundaries of the applicable law;

VII. Preside over the State Indigenous Council;

VIII. Watch over the conservation of order, tranquilty and the security of the State;

IX. Exercise command over the public force of the State and municipalities where it habitually resides or transitorially.

X. Iniciate laws of amnesty or liberty with suspended sentences;

XI. Declare cases in whichthe  expropriation of individual goods and rights will proceed for public utility in the form that the law establishes;

XII. Authorize, issue, and cancel patents for the desempeno de la funcion notarial en los terminos de la legislacion respective (within the boundaries of the applicable law);

XIII. Decree in agreement with the applicable legislation the means necessary for ordering the human asentamientos and establish provisions, uses, reserves, destinations/destinies of land, water, and forests, to the effect of executing public works and planning and regulating the foundation, conservation, improvement, and growth of population centers;

XIV. Issue professional titles according to the law;

XV. Initiate before Congress laws and decrees deemed suitable for the improvement of Public Administration;

XVI. Solicit the Permanent Commission to call Congress to extraordinary sessions;

XVII. Present to Congress in the month of November of every year a report duly documenting the state of  (guardar-keeping) the various branches of the Public Adminstration;

XVIII. Present to Congress every year, on the third of the opening of the second ordinary period of sessions, the Public Account corresponding to the previous year;

XIX. Present to Congress, in the first ordinary period of sessions, the budget of expenses for the program of the following year;

XX. Facilitate the Judicial Power the help necessary for the expeditious exercise of their functions;

XXI. Submit for the consideration of Congress, or of the Permanent Commission, the appointments for magistrates;

XXII. Name and freely remove employees and functionaries of the public Administration of the State of Chiapas, respecting in every case the attendant rights inconformity with the applicable legislation;

XXIII. Turn over to the Prosecutor of Justice matters that should be discussed in the courts, in order to exercise before them the legal attributes, without diminishing the powers of the Public Minister;

XXIV. Agree that the Secretary of the Government or the secretaries of the office to the sessions of congress to give to this reports that it requests and to support in debates initiative that it presents or the observations that the Executive makes to the projects of law or decrees;

XXV. Order the dismissal for bad conduct of judicial functionaries to which the second paragraph of Article 71 refers;

XXVI. Create trusts in which the citizenship participates as coadyuvante of the Pubilc Adminstration in activities of social interest, dendowing them with the necessary resources for the best achievement of their ends, as well as watch over the correct application of the said resources by supervision and audits;

XXVII. The other that this Constitution expressly confers.