Mexico's ruling party, the PRI, recently quashed legislation that would have allowed Mexicans living abroad to vote in presidential elections. Now, activists are trying to mix "oil and water" by uniting the conservative PAN and the left-of-center PRD behind a single presidential candidate. Pacific News Service commentator Jesus Martinez says it's not impossible. Martinez is an immigrant researcher and activist who was formerly a member of the Political Science Department at Santa Clara University.

Ask Carlos Olamendi what he wants for Mexico, and he will tell you, with enthusiasm, "A very blue sky with a shining sun" (Un cielo muy azul con un sol resplandeciente).

This may sound a little vacuous and romantic coming from a man of middle years. But the statement takes on a bold meaning in the context of contemporary Mexican politics.

Olamendi, a businessman in Orange County, California, has been active in the campaign to give Mexicans living abroad the right to vote. But his colorful answer refers to a much more important effort -- uniting opposition parties behind a common presidential candidate in order to defeat the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which has held power uninterruptedly for 70 years. This could lead to a shift in Mexican politics that would have been considered preposterous until very recently

The blue he speaks of is the color of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) while the sun is the symbol of the left of center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). While it is generally agreed that a majority of voters dislike the PRI, it is also generally agreed that unless the two opposition parties combine forces, the ruling party will remain in power well into the future.

Detractors suggest such a realignment is as unrealistic as mixing oil and water. The PAN was created in 1939, largely as a conservative response to the policies of then-president Lazaro Cardenas. The PRD, in its turn, was created a decade ago by dissidents who found the PRI unwilling to reform itself -- and its most notable member was Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of the former president.

PAN's leading figure today is Vicente Fox, an entrepreneur turned politician, who now governs Guanajuato state (some 200 miles northwest of Mexico City) and leads all public opinion polls concerned with next year's presidential race. Cardenas is mayor of Mexico City, and is set to start his third bid for the presidency.

Fox is outspoken, an extrovert who shines in the public arena. He spends as much time abroad as in Guanajuato. He has emphasized economic development, drawing considerable foreign investment to a region with a long tradition of emigration to the United States.

Cardenas is believed to have been cheated out of a victory in the 1988 presidential elections. His star faded in 1994, when he placed third, but shone again unexpectedly in 1997 when he became mayor of the capital in a landslide.

Mexicans in the United States see both Fox and Cardenas as sympathetic to immigrant rights and interests. For example, both supported a bill that would permit nationals abroad to vote in future presidential elections. Each one met with immigrant activists, endorsed their campaigns and tried to get their respective parties to push the reform through the Mexican Congress. (The measure passed the lower house, but was blocked in June by the PRI-dominated Senate).

In contrast, the PRI's leading presidential candidate Francisco Labstida Ochoa, criticized the immigrant's right to vote and worked against it.

Immigrant activists have at least two good reasons to prefer an alliance of opposition forces. For one, such alliances in state elections scored recent successes, in 1998 and on July 4 this year. For another, the right-to-vote campaign has become a transnational civil rights movement that transcends party politics, allowing individuals with diverse sympathies to collaborate productively. The activists may have lost the battle to secure the vote for he time being, but they have created a thriving movement that is alive with cooperation among newfound allies.

For immigrants, it has become clear that if they are to secure the right to vote -- or any other significant reform -- they can no longer remain on the sidelines of Mexican politics. They must work to elect a friend to the presidency, and to ensure the defeat of the PRI in Congress.

Still, achieving an alliance behind a single candidate is no easy task. Current laws make it difficult to vote in this way, and both Fox and Cardenas are often seen as stubborn and unwilling to place their individual presidential ambitions on hold. Yet both have expressed greater eagerness for an alliance since July 4, when the allied opposition forces won the in a small, poor state. ( But divided, they also watched the PRI win the state of Mexico, a rich industrial region and one of the most heavily populated in the country.)

Immigrant activists hope they can unite oil and water. As PRD national president Pablo Gomez pointed out recently, one only has to look at the ingredients in a jar of mayonnaise to realize that everything is possible.