Mexico OKs Scaled-Back Law on Fair Elections

Congress on Tuesday passed a long-awaited law promoting fair elections--but opposition parties complained that it had been gutted of key reforms.

The law, which many here have hailed as part of the groundwork for Mexico’s transition to true democracy, is significant because it limits the government’s ability to commit electoral fraud. Authorities have manipulated votes persistently over the past seven decades to maintain Mexico’s one-party rule, analysts say.

Passed after two years of often bitter negotiations, the new electoral law also provides opposition parties with government funding and more television time and allows for popular election of the mayor of Mexico City, formerly a presidential appointee.

But an agreement on more far-reaching changes crumbled. Stung by losses this month in local elections, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, balked last week, dropping key reforms from the legislation. On Tuesday, the PRI used its congressional majority to ram the watered-down legislation through the Senate by an 89-22 vote, mirroring an earlier move in the lower house.

Some analysts and opposition politicians said the PRI retreat signaled that party hard-liners would not go quietly into a new democratic future. “Once again, the majority of the Institutional Revolutionary Party has killed the hopes of millions of Mexicans who not only hoped for the installation of a democratic government but have been fighting for it,” Sen. Hector Sanchez Lopez of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party declared during the debate.

Despite the law’s reduced scope, it is still expected to provide fairer competition in crucial midterm elections in mid-1997 and in the presidential race in the year 2000. The PRI has won every presidential election since 1929.

In a major change, an independent Federal Electoral Institute will now replace the PRI government in organizing and supervising elections and counting votes. A judicial board, also independent of the government, will handle election disputes.

This new structure should eliminate notorious incidents such as the breakdown of vote-counting computers after the 1988 elections, which led to widespread accusations of a fraudulent presidential victory for Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

And some analysts said that, as opposition parties increasingly gain ground in local and state elections, they eventually will push electoral reform further. “All the political parties are very realistic and pragmatic. They realize the historical trend of change is giving them the impetus to win. It doesn’t matter if the law is not the optimum,” said political scientist Emilio Zebadua, a member of the Federal Electoral Institute.

Mexico is in the midst of a transformation of its political and economic system that is so sweeping that some have compared it with the remaking of the Soviet system. As part of the process, President Ernesto Zedillo sought an agreement with opposition parties on a new law to guarantee fair elections. At a triumphant ceremony in July, he announced an accord.

But it broke down as the parties squabbled over how much government money would be available for them to spend in elections. The PRI--known for spending heavily before a vote on everything from new bridges to gifts of fertilizer for peasants--demanded more money for the parties than the opposition did.

After opposition parties refused to budge, the PRI backtracked on other reforms it had previously agreed to accept. PRI lawmakers departed from the original accord, for example, by:

* Reducing the charge for exceeding campaign spending limits to an “administrative error” rather than a criminal offense.

* Eliminating plans for a special commission to audit party finances in campaigns.

* Restricting opposition parties from joining to support single candidates in select races.

* Dropping plans to allow millions of Mexicans abroad to vote in presidential elections in the year 2000; the matter is now under study by the government.

The new law also doesn’t grant as much media access to the opposition as originally agreed; it lets some local members of the old electoral bureaucracy keep their posts.

On Monday, Zedillo lashed out at the opposition, saying they were enjoying the democratic changes, even while they made political hay by criticizing the PRI for being intransigent. “It’s deplorable that some prefer to accentuate the few points of disaccord, when there are many notable points of accord and consensus,” he said.

But it was clear that the failure to gain an all-party agreement diluted what the president had imagined would be a major political victory.

“This will not be the solid bridge that many of us wanted to go into 1997 with political stability,” said Santiago Creel, a former citizen counselor to the Federal Electoral Institute who helped organize the 1994 elections. “An electoral reform that aspired . . . to begin a national process of transition toward democracy” doesn’t accomplish that goal.

Helena Sundman of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.