Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

MEXICO: Social Conflicts, Hostile Campaign Pose No Threat to Elections

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jun 20 2006 (IPS) - Mexico’s Jul. 2 elections will go smoothly, and the president-elect will be announced that same day, say authorities and international observers, who are neither worried about the social conflicts that have broken out during the campaign nor about the political mudslinging.

Mexico’s electoral institutions are now among the most reliable and trustworthy in the world, said José Salafranca, the European Parliament deputy who is heading up the EU election observers mission. There will be another 356 foreign observers as well, from different international bodies and organisations.

Luis Carlos Ugalde, the president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), which was made entirely independent of the executive branch by reforms adopted in the early 1990s, said this week that the elections are safe from any problem.

Ugalde said that on the very night of the elections, Mexicans will know without a doubt who will succeed President Vicente Fox in December, for a six-year term that ends in 2012.

The polls show that Felipe Calderón of Fox’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) and former mayor Andrés López Obrador of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) are neck in neck, with roughly 35 percent ratings each.

But social conflicts, as well as the tense pre-election climate, have generated concern among some observers and voters.

“In Mexico we are worried about the tension that has marked the last weeks before the elections, but all of this is understandable in such a tight race,” José Luis Ramírez, a political scientist at the University of La Salle, told IPS.

Spokespersons for the López Obrador campaign complained about purported irregularities on the voting lists, and charged that the Fox administration had meddled in the elections in favour of the PAN candidate.

The leftist candidate also accused Calderón’s brother-in-law Diego Zavala, who owns a software firm, of involvement in improper government contracts.

Trade unions, meanwhile, have threatened to hold a nationwide strike four days before the general elections, to demand better wages and reject supposed government meddling in the internal affairs of the national miners’ union.

Supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), a poorly-armed indigenous rebel group based in the southern state of Chiapas, have also announced that on election day they will hold protests in the capital to demand the release of peasant farmer activists accused of attacking police officers and taking them hostage.

And in the southern state of Oaxaca, some 70,000 teachers have been on strike since late May, demanding a cost of living adjustment and an increased education budget. In addition, they announced that they would boycott the July elections.

But despite the tense climate, compounded by the endless trading of insults among the candidates, United Nations observers have fully endorsed the electoral process.

Ray Kennedy, deputy coordinator of the U.N. “Support for electoral observation” project, said there is international faith in the work of the IFE and Mexico’s federal electoral court.

He noted that suspicions are normal and that they arise in any country, regardless of the strength of any given democratic system. He also dismissed the allegations that Mexico’s voting registers had been tampered with, as charged by the PRD, and said they were very accurate.

Ugalde gave his assurances that every single vote will count, and stressed that “absolutely no aspect” of the electoral process worries him.

Under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country from 1929 to 2000, elections in Mexico were frequently marred by widespread complaints of fraud, vote-buying and coercion.

IFE’s predecessor, the Federal Electoral Commission, was controlled by the executive branch. But in 1990, lawmakers negotiated a new electoral code, creating the autonomous IFE.

In the 2000 elections, the PRI lost its grip on the presidency for the first time in over seven decades, when Fox was elected.

IFE has won high levels of public trust, with surveys showing that it is one of the most respected institutions in Mexico. It also enjoys international prestige. In 2004, IFE officials advised election authorities in Iraq, at the behest of the United Nations.

“Accusing IFE of bias or saying the elections are in danger are a sign of democratic immaturity and a result of the heated war of words generated by such a close race,” said Ramírez, at the La Salle University.

Mexicans will also vote for 300 members of the lower house of Congress, 128 senators and dozens of local authorities on Jul. 2.

Also competing in the presidential elections, but with no real chances, are PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo, Patricia Mercado of the Social Democratic and Farmer Alternative, and Roberto Campa of the New Alliance.