“Political trampoline”

As in several countries, political parties in Mexico have attempted to balance out gender inequality by at least requiring that a given percentage of their candidates for public office be female.  Enoé Uranga Muñoz, whose  PRD goes a step further in also requiring a percentage of indigenous candidates, is outraged that eight out of the ten new Deputies first official act was to submit their resignation in favor of their male supplientes*.

Uranga (who has also pushed her party consider “affirmative action” for gays and lesbians) — and who called the resignations a “political trampoline” — was joined by PANista María Antonia Pérez Reyes in objecting to the resignations.  She said it was an embarrassment that women were being used as a “tradeable commodity” in politics.

Six of the deputies asking to resign are from the Green Party, the others from across the board.  A few women have achieved high positions in national politics (Esther Elba Gordilla heads the largest public employees’ union in the Americas, Beatriz Parades Rangel is chair of the PRI, Rosario Green was foreign secretary long before anyone heard of Madeline Albright and Patricia Espinosa holds the post today and Josefina Vázquez Mota — who served in both the Fox and Calderón cabinets — is a highly probable PAN presidential candidate for 2012), but are still under-represented in the legislature.

* Not uniquely Mexican, but an unfamiliar practice to people in the United States and other countries,  is voting not just for a legislative candidate, but for a designated substitute.  Because the Mexican constitution does not allow either for re-election to federal office, nor for a anyone who has held federal office in the past six months to be a candidate for another federal office, there are usually mass resignations six months and one day before federal elections.  And, one can count on a few legislators dying, fleeing the country in disgrace or otherwise leaving during the session, in which case the B-team is already in place.