et eT tis

MOST OF the 80 million
Mexicans will neither know
nor care what the Canadian
newspapers had to say about
their election, so perhaps it
doesn’t matter much that we
were holier than thou, conde-
scending, full of the less lovely
characteristics of Anglo
Saxons.

We are a pretty rude bunch.

Both the wire services and the
newspapers which come readily to
hand here in our cedar swamp report-
ed the Mexican presidential election
like a schoolmarm in a class for the
brain damaged.

The natives, we were told, are
improving year by year. Who knows,
some day they may be as good as we
are at running their own affairs.

This is arrogant, tiresome and stu-
pid. There may be other words I have
left out.

The Globe and Mail is a handy
example. It likes to call itself
Canada’s national newspaper.

The Globe began its report with
the charges of electoral fraud issued
by one of the two losing presidential
candidates.

Next we learned that the other
loser, who gathered a larger share of
the opposition vote, did not claim
fraud. Oh well, that's newspapering.
Negativism always takes pri-te of
place.

What was less forgivable is what
the Globe did (o those of us who
turned to it for an array of solid facts.
Too bad for us. The editors started
the Mexican election story on Page
1, jumped it to Page A5 and then for-
got to put the rest of it on Page 5.

No doubt a computer was to
blame. In today’s newspapers, as in
today’s bureaucrat, nobody is ever to

Paul
St. Pierre

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

blame for what goes wrong. The
computer done jt.

That didn’t help readers who
wanted to learn something.

Next day the Globe had an editor-
ial on the Mexican elections and
declared that the natives are begin-
ning to pick up on things down there.

Our Vancouver Sun did better on
factual reporting. The editors didn’t
lose the story about a new govern-
ment in the eighth-largest country in
the world, a nation which is a neigh-
bor and a free trade partner.

We leamed some moderately
unusual things about this Mexican
election.

Voters were marked with indcli-
ble ink, to make it difficult for them
to vate twice. There were voter iden-
tification cards. There were foreign
observers at the polls, including for-
mer Canadian party leaders Joe
Clark and Ed Broadbent.

Funny, I don‘t recall a Canadian
election in which voters were dyed to

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prevent double voting.

Neither do f remember foreigners
being invited to ceme into our coun-
try and told to fee! free to monitor
whal was going on at our polling sta-
tions.

Is that because the world knows
that Canadians are so much finer,
truer. purer people? Or is it because
we always thought
that our elections were
nobody's business but
our own?

Every newspaper
and wire story took
note that the winning
party, the PRI, has
won every Mexican
election since 1929.

Canadians, on the
other hand, elected a
single party, the
Liberals, for only one
generation, from 1934
to 1954, It’s a matter of degree, no
doubt.

Somebody quoted a mexican as
saying that the PRI could automati-

cally depend on getting an extra 15%

of any national vote.

It needn't be dishonest, strictly
speaking. The advantage is built in
for a government party with a tong
term of office.

Friday, September 9, 1994 - North Shore News - 9

Please spare Mexico the pious cant

Odd as it may seem, that is exact-
ly the figure quoted to me in the

[960s by a Social Credit Party strate-

gist in British Columbia.

“We can always come up with an
extra 15%.”

Not to forget Mackenzie King's
remark in the graveyard about the
ancestor who voted Conservative.

66 Jn today’s newspapers, as in
today’s bureaucrat, nobody ts ever
to blame for what goes wrong. The

computer done it, 9?

“He votes for you, now, Mr. King,”
said one of his ministers.

Other little oddities about
Canadian elections come to mind.
Chinese Canadians and Indians
didn't get the vote until the 1950s. In
Quebec, Indians remained disenfran-
chised even longer.

So, all right, what did go on in
Mexico in this election?

Alas, | live past time in that coun-
try so } can never be as knowledge-
able as Canadian editors and editorial
writers who never set a foot in the
place. But if one word or two might
be permitted, they are these:

Nobody in this world is more
likely to believe that this presidential
clection was rigged than the ordinary
Mexican. He would be
suspicious of the Virgin
of Guadelupe if he
heard she was involved
in politics.

Mexicans have
achieved almost total
cynicism — more than
the Americans and
much, much more than
Canadians.

Yes, Mexican elec-
tions have been rigged.
It’s an easy thing to do
in a country with a vast
sub-class of illiterate poor people.
Without doubt, the rigging also went
on this time in some areas.

But the people of the great
Mexican Republic don’t deserve the
pious cant which Canadian newspa-
pels serve up.

[ have refrained from comment-
ing on the hypocrisy of the American
press, a heroic exercise in restraint.

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