SAN DIEGO — Sixty days after the Mexican national election, Ernesto Ruffo Appel still can’t believe that in just
90 more days, his opposition party, the National Action Party, or the PAN, will chart a new destiny for Mexico with Vicente Fox at the helm.Ruffo, the former governor of Baja California, says, after 71
years, Mexico is reborn and “on the verge of a quantum leap” in its democracy.
There will be a seismic shift, he says from a top-down government to one where power is vested at the local level.
“Now we
can go to the people and tell them we can do things without waiting for Mexico City to give the “ok,” said Ruffo.
The panista Ruffo, Mexico’s first opposition governor from 1989-1995, reflected on the
changes in store.
“We will feel its impact more immediately here [Baja-San Diego] because the PAN has been building the political mechanisms for when the national elections gave us the advantage,” said
Ruffo.
“First, the new administration will have intense meetings with the governors on how to transfer political and fiscal power to the states. These talks will take about six to twelve months,” Ruffo
explained.
He said the state and federal government will tackle issues of private investment, security of property rights, creating processes for small- and medium-sized businesses to grow along the border.
“Right now a foreign business must go through 12 different agencies and regulations that contradict each other,” Ruffo explained. “In the end, it will be a simplified process with maybe two or three
agencies, most at the state level.
Second, there will have to be serious fiscal discussions on how taxes will be redistributed, Ruffo said, describing that today, the federal government collects all the
taxes and then distributes some to the states.
“We will turn that upside down,” Ruffo commented. The state will collect the taxes and send some to the central government. “This will allow Baja to move
thetaxes back into the economy faster and build the infrastructure that foster economy growth.”
Ruffo said the new economic policies will lead to a new democracy across Mexico.
The third change by a PAN
government will be the emphasis on education, particularly in the maquiladoras, the manufacturing plants along the border.
“We are going to reform our education system so that it includes training in the
plants. The best way is to give tax credits to companies that provide high-quality and high-tech training,” said Ruffo. “In this manner, higher education leads to higher paying jobs, which fosters a
politically vibrant middle class and greater democracy.”
Ruffo admitted that to relieve population and immigration pressures along the border, the PAN government will have to create subsidies for Mexico’s
poor.
“The reality is that we are still not a fully developed country, and we will create policies to help our poor. Ruffo described something very similar to the U.S. form of welfare-to-work.
With Fox
winning only 34 percent of the vote last July 2, Ruffo says consensus will be required.
“Of course,” Ruffo added, “the people of Baja California now have a voice on how all this is to be accomplished.”
People
