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 Editorials | Opinions | June 2005 
State of Mexico Elections Inspire Rancor
 Kenneth Emmond - The Herald Mexico
Something's rotten in the State of Mexico. Maybe it's in the ballot boxes. It could be in the public accounts. Perhaps it can be found in the electoral board. Or, it might be all three - and then some.
Mexico's most populous state is up for grabs on July 3, and early indicators suggest it's practically a given that the already-fractious election campaign will see a record number of challenges, accusations, even calls for annulment.
Post-election finger-pointing is almost routine in Mexico, and this one is unlikely to be an exception. With more than a month still to go, the campaign has turned nasty. It's not a stretch to expect the worst after Election Day.
Nor is there a clear-cut opinion poll leader. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has won every election in the state since the party was founded in the 1920s. Now it has a comfortable but not insurmountable edge, but the surefire winner is not even a candidate. It's none other than PRI national leader Roberto Madrazo.
The labyrinth of alleged and apparent election irregularities has come to pass on the watch of outgoing Governor Arturo Montiel. Montiel, it happens, is Madrazo's chief rival for the party's brass ring — to be the PRI's chosen candidate in next year's presidential elections.
If the PRI loses this Last Battle of state elections before July 2006, it will reflect on Montiel's leadership.
If it wins, the cacophony of accusations of fraud, corruption, misuse of public resources for partisan purposes, campaign spending excesses, and whatever else emerges between now and July 3 will be laid at the feet of the incumbent governor.
The first brouhaha was over the registration of the candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Yeidckol Polevnsky. It concerned the fact that her name did not match the one on her birth certificate.
This attempt to cast aspersions on her backfired: not only was her registration approved, she gained public sympathy by declaring publicly that her family had changed her name to protect her from public disgrace following an adolescent pregnancy.
Earlier this month, all the members of the State Electoral Institute (IEEM) were forced to resign. They were replaced just weeks before the election following allegations that they had been bribed by Cartonera Plástica y Samesa, the successful bidder to provide the ballot boxes.
José Juan Gómez Urbina, the former IEEM president, admitted that he had made a joke to some of his colleagues about receiving a kickback, but since the "joke" involved a specific amount — about 25 million pesos, for a bid that came in at 63 million — not everyone laughed.
The Spanish-language weekly newsmagazine Vertigo has published an analysis of ballot box costs for all statewide elections in 2004 and 2005, and discovered some complex but interesting patterns that imply that bribery might be part of Samesa's modus operandi.
Governor Montiel was hobnobbing in Europe when the IEEM scandal broke, but apparently concluded it wasn't serious enough to interrupt his international agenda.
Also under attack is the PRI's state gubernatorial candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.
He is accused of vastly exceeding the legislated cap on campaign spending. According to the PRD's arithmetic, during the first 25 days of his campaign he spent 282 million pesos, exceeding the legal spending cap for the entire campaign by almost one-third.
Overspending on election campaigns was good strategy in the past. The offending political parties suffered stiff fines but elections were not overturned.
This time it might be different. PRD campaign manager Ricardo Monreal announced last week that the party is already laying charges against the PRI over its profligate election spending. Though Monreal did not provide details, he is also charging the National Action Party (PAN) and its candidate, Rubén Mendoza, with spending excesses.
There is video evidence that the PRI has made extensive use of public resources to promote its candidates. Other videos show that the PAN is doing the same in its municipal strongholds.
As an electoral entity, the State of Mexico is an oddity. Most of it is farming and mining country with a fairly low population. The capital city, Toluca, an hour's drive from Mexico City, has a population of about half a million.
That changes dramatically around the three-sided border with the Federal District. The municipalities that ring the national capital account for more than half of the state's 13 million people - and more than half of the Mexico City Metropolitan Area population.
INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE
At least four of these satellite cities — Tlalnepantla, Naucalpan, Nezahualcoyotl, and Ecatepec — are behemoths of a million or more people in their own right. They grew as bedroom communities for the Federal District, but the industries that have sprung up in and around them now account for 10 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product.
Whatever the outcome on July 3 and whatever challenges emerge afterward, the State of Mexico elections will be closely scrutinized by all parties, and by more citizens than ever before.
Little by little, voters are catching on to the ways they have been hoodwinked in the past.
Tricks will be tried and some of them will still work, but despite this, elections in Mexico are becoming less rotten and more democratic.
Kenneth Emmond is a freelance journalist and economist who has lived in Mexico since 1995. Kemmond00@yahoo.com |
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