Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver

IN the next six-year presidential term (2013-2018), Mexico mustface huge political, economic, social and security challenges which will not be easy for any national politician to solve.

According to analysts, the issue of most concern and importance for the Mexican people is security… or rather the lack of security prevailing in towns and cities.

Survey after survey reveals that, for the first time, security preoccupations exceed economic ones and this in spite of the fact that drug trafficking, the source of most of the violence, has been part of Mexican realities for decades.

The difference with the past is the huge increase of violence related to drug trafficking and organized crime, with the bloody activities of powerful cartels like the Zetas and Sinaloa, fighting for control of narcotics routes in Tamaulipas (northeast, Veracruz (east), Nuevo León (north) and Guerrero (west), the most violent states and patrolled by the army.

An Excelsior-BGC poll, asking Mexicans which issues most concerned them, revealed that 75% said that they would like to see aspirants to power in Mexico discuss how to confront insecurity and crime.

On the heels of this issue came employment (51%), education (40%), followed by the economy (25%), health (12%), and combating poverty (9%) which, while placed last, remains a pressing issue in the second most highly populated nation in Latin America.

In this context, Javier Oliva, a researcher into security at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), noted that the most important challenge "is to reconstitute conditions of social peace in the areas most affected by violence in Mexico."

The result of President Felipe Calderón’s decision to confront the increasing power of drug cartels with the Mexican armed forces has been a dramatic explosion of deaths related to government and drug trafficker disputes over plazas, routes and effective sovereignty over terrain, with the horrifying estimate of 55,000 deaths since the outgoing President assumed power in 2006. A dramatic situation with a direct impact on the whole of Mexican society and its institutions, as narcotics money is corrupting the social and institutional fabric of this country, a situation fomented by the proximity of the United States, the most lucrative global market for illegal drugs of every kind, arms smuggling and human trafficking, and paradoxically, a country which insists on drawing up arbitrary lists of other countries while doing very little to provide more effective assistance for its southern neighbor.

In fact, Washington is aggravating the phenomenon with its immoral wall along the border with Mexico, which provokes the deaths of hundreds of immigrants every year, with scandalous federal operations like Fast and Furious, related to illegal weapons sale to Mexico, for which U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was declared in contempt of a House committee for lack of cooperation, an unprecedented measure in the annals of this country.

Craig Deare, an international security analyst, confirms that the situation for the new President is complicated by Mexico’s complex relation with the United States. While he states that there are some advantages to having the largest market in the world next door, this same market – also one of drug consumption – has caused and will continue to cause, greater complications for the Mexican government, given that the U.S. demand for enormous quantities of illegal narcotics fuels the problem.

Political options for the future Mexican leader are limited on this issue, given that he will have to choose between continuing with the current strategy of using the armed forces to combat the bloody drug cartels – plus a few cosmetic retouches – and resign himself to the difficult relationship with the U.S. in this context, plus the additional danger of compromising the country’s sovereignty, or launch a frontal attack on the problem by providing more employment and education and reducing poverty and social exclusion, breeding grounds for the cartels.

Insecurity and drug trafficking are problems which go beyond the Mexican border and whatever decision the incoming head of state opts for, it is not going to solve the fundamental problem, the existence of this lucrative market in the United States, where $65 billion is spent annually on illegal narcotics, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

Another challenge is the need to create many more jobs to prevent youth from falling into informal labor or ending up swelling the ranks of organized crime, given that this population sector is growing more rapidly than in neighboring countries.

On the other hand, the reduction of poverty in Mexico has seen a setback in recent years, with consequences which will affect the country’s future. Children constitute almost half of the 52 million Mexicans living in poverty (a total of 112 million), a fact indicating that "poverty could have most lasting consequences than in other countries," as a new report from the elitist Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) states. Mexico will thus require increased public spending to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable.

Moreover, poverty in the country increased by 51% during Calderón’s six-year term, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL).

The second economy of Latin America, since 2000, Mexico’s poor population has grown by 15 million under PAN governments, reflected in the punishment vote against the National Action Party (PAN) candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota in the recent presidential elections.

According to the final results of the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE), Enrique Peña Nieto from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won the July 1 elections with 38.21% of the vote, followed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), from the Democratic Party of the Revolution (PRD), representing a left-wing coalition (31.59%), while the PAN came third with 25.41%.

AMLO contested the results, exposing the buying of five million votes and exceeding campaign spending limits, while PAN recognized them, but stated that there were inequalities.

In accordance with electoral law, the Federal Electoral Court has until September 6 to analyze and validate the election results and ratify the new president, or not.

If the elections are validated, PRI will be the leading political force in the new Congress. However, it will not have an absolute or simple majority in either chamber in terms of imposing an agenda, but will have to resort to alliances and pacts.

Whoever is finally declared the next Mexican president will have the difficult mission of restoring the wounds of the electoral battle, uniting the country and rebuilding a minimum consensus, particularly in legislative terms, in order to implement a government program.

The new Congress is inaugurated on September 1 and the new President of the Republic, with the heavy burden of achieving a better Mexico, will assume power on December 1.