Ruling Party Bought Tabasco Vote, Opposition Alleges : Mexico: ‘Mysterious’ delivery of documents apparently unveils state election shenanigans.

The political opposition filed a formal complaint against the ruling party Tuesday alleging that the Institutional Revolutionary Party bought, bargained for and stole last year’s state elections in the state of Tabasco.

The opposition has made similar accusations for years--but this time is different, defeated gubernatorial candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

This time, Lopez asserted, he has proof: receipts, canceled checks, invoices and dozens of other documents culled from 19 cardboard boxes that were apparently stolen from Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, headquarters in the southeastern state of Tabasco. The boxes were mysteriously delivered to the opposition in Mexico City last week and are now on display in the capital.

Lopez alleged in his complaint that the documents prove that the PRI spent at least $70 million to beat him and his Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, on Nov. 20.

That is almost 70 times the legal limit set by Mexico’s campaign financing law and is the equivalent of paying almost $220 for each of the 319,000 votes that PRI gubernatorial candidate Roberto Madrazo Pintado received to win the election.

Officially, the PRI asserts that the documents are fake.

But opposition leaders--who reported that the cardboard boxes were delivered by an unidentified man in a three-ton truck in Mexico City’s downtown plaza early one morning last week--insist that the documents prove for the first time since the PRI took power 66 years ago that the party buys its way into office.

Further, the criminal complaint Lopez filed with the federal attorney general’s office is likely to be pursued as never before. That is because it will be handled by the office of Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano. He is a member of the PRI’s chief rival, the opposition National Action Party, and was appointed by President Ernesto Zedillo in December.

The president said he appointed Lozano partly to police the PRI’s authoritarian rule. Lozano’s deputies have publicly vowed to investigate Lopez’s evidence.

“Never in the history of this country have such files been found,” Lopez said Tuesday. “They [PRI officials] have always burned them.”

Just how they were found remains “mysterious,” Lopez acknowledged.

Auldarico Hernandez, a federal PRD senator, said the unmarked truck that delivered the boxes pulled up to a group of party supporters who had walked 41 days from Tabasco to Mexico City in a marathon protest last week. It was well after midnight, Hernandez said, when the driver unloaded the boxes and told him: “I think this will be of interest to you.” The driver then sped off.

“I thought it was food,” Hernandez recalled.

Party lawyers and election experts spent days sifting through the boxes. When they realized what they had, strategists decided not merely to file the criminal complaint on Tuesday but also to put the documents on display for journalists at the PRD’s Mexico City headquarters.

The number of check stubs, receipts and invoices, which appear to be authentic, add substance to widespread reports of vote-buying and influence-peddling leveled by the opposition and independent poll watchers during the Tabasco election.

The documents show large payments to local journalists in exchange for favorable coverage.

One check for 9,800 pesos--then the equivalent of $3,000--was used to buy 7,000 chickens, which the opposition asserts were distributed to those who voted for the PRI.

Lopez and Hernandez theorized Tuesday that the documents were a “gift” from a dissident reform faction in the PRI.

Both said they are sure that the documents, whatever their source, will bolster the PRD campaign to overturn the Tabasco election.

Susan Drummet of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.