ELECTIONS : Sunday’s Vote to Be 1st Test of Mexico’s Reform Code

With the debut election scheduled Sunday for Mexico’s new electoral code--the keystone of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s democratic reform program--opposition parties already are crying fraud.

The gubernatorial vote in the northeastern industrial state of Nuevo Leon is considered a test run of the new electoral system and a precursor of the congressional elections set for next month.

The election also will test the will and ability of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has ruled Mexico for 62 years, to fulfill its promise to conduct political campaigns without government support.

Salinas, who won the presidency in 1988 with just under 51% of the vote, the narrowest margin ever for a PRI candidate, moved quickly to restructure the economy. But he has gone slowly on political reform.

During his administration, the first opposition governor elected since the PRI’s founding, Ernesto Ruffo of the rightist National Action Party (PAN), took office in Baja. But other evidence of change has been scarce.

The new electoral code was the administration reply to accusations of foot-dragging on democratic reform. Sunday’s election will be an indication of how effective or susceptible to fraud the revised system is.

Nuevo Leon is a tough test. Well-organized opposition parties and an aggressive local press corps scrutinize balloting. In past elections, reporters have infiltrated the vote-counting and documented fraud.

Interest in the electoral system has largely overshadowed other issues in the campaigns of the eight gubernatorial candidates. The leading contenders: PRI’s Socrates Rizzo, mayor of Monterrey, the state capital; Rogelio Sada of PAN, and Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate Lucas de la Garza.

The new system, based on public voter rolls and individual credentials, is visibly strained. Credentials were to have been delivered to voters by Thursday. But as of Friday, 150,000 of the state’s 1.5 million registered voters had not received them. The voter rolls, the same ones to be used in federal elections, show some names repeated, with different registration numbers.

Officials in towns run by opposition parties have discovered other problems. In the Monterrey suburb of San Pedro de la Garza, city employees told election officials that 500 families had been moved from a flood plain to public housing in another county, said Tatania Clouthier, the housing authority chief.

The houses were condemned and destroyed. But the names still appear on the suburb’s voter rolls.

Clouthier--daughter of the late Manuel Clouthier, PAN’s 1988 presidential candidate--said city officials will be at polling places Sunday with a list of the relocated to ensure they do not vote in San Pedro.

Such incidents undercut the credibility of the electoral code and institutions established to enforce it. Extremely cynical because of the machine-style politics that have dominated their country for decades, Mexicans view any mistakes or irregularities as signs of fraud.

Fraud and campaign spending have been the main election issues. Much of the controversy has focused on PRI fund-raising among business people. The membership list of the party’s state finance committee reads like the board of a prestigious new Monterrey-based corporation.

The committee was sworn in by Donaldo Colosio, the PRI’s national chairman, who said participation of business leaders is “a sign of a new kind of participation in the party.” But that participation raises questions about contributors’ influence over public policy.