A group of 46 high-profile Mexican politicians and academics from across the ideological spectrum shook this country earlier this week with a daring proposal to end Mexico’s political gridlock: forcing whomever is elected president in 2012 to form a coalition government.
The proposal, which made front page headlines in Mexico’s biggest newspapers, was signed by several presidential hopefuls from all three major parties — including Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, of the centre-left Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), Sen. Manlio Fabio Beltrones, of the nationalist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Santiago Creel, of the centre-right ruling National Action Party (PAN) — as well as by writer Carlos Fuentes and several prominent academics.
While other leading politicians have reservations about the proposal, there is a wide consensus that Mexico needs to
