Mexico's fractured vote

MEXICO IS A deeply divided country, as shown by the results of Sunday's elections. For the sake of its future, those divisions need to be resolved peacefully, and an honest, transparent final accounting of the election results is essential for this purpose.

Felipe Calderon, the candidate of the free-enterprise right, appears to have won, but his slight margin of victory in the official count announced yesterday needs to be confirmed by the election monitors and the courts. At 36 percent, his plurality hardly constitutes a mandate, and if he is to govern effectively he needs to form alliances with politicians who supported his opponents.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, representing the populist left, apparently fell just short of victory. He expressed fears that the election was stolen. The Federal Electoral Institute, which polices the process, has an international reputation for honesty. If it and the courts certify that Calderon has won, Lopez Obrador should accept the result peacefully, as he has promised.

Roberto Madrazo, representing the Institutional Revolutionary Party, trailed with 22 percent of the vote. The PRI (its Spanish acronym) ruled Mexico for 60 years and stole an election from Lopez Obrador's party in 1988. The Electoral Institute was set up to prevent the vote-stealing that kept the PRI in power. The patronage-driven, corrupt style of governance practiced by the PRI is inadequate to cope with the problems of modern Mexico.

Mexicans, however, haven't reached a consensus about what comes next. Privatization and openness to foreign investment have been dominant themes over the past 20 years, but they haven't produced the prosperity their supporters had expected. Much of the economy, including the oil industry, is still in state control, and much that was privatized ended up in the hands of the business and political elite.

The government needs to further deregulate the economy while mandating that the affluent pay more in taxes, a difficult task in a society where tax avoidance is the norm. And the new Congress, also elected Sunday, is as fractured as the presidential vote. Yet without extra money, the government will be unable to improve the inadequate transportation system or give young people sufficient education for jobs in a service-oriented economy.

With the country stuck at just a 2.2 percent annual rate of economic growth for the last six years, it's no wonder that millions of Mexicans are coming to the United States, legally or not, for work. Congress and the next president need to give them reasons to stay home, but first, the process that elected the president must be perceived throughout Mexican society as honest and legitimate.