Mexican Electoral Board Faces Challenge From Ruling Party

They were acclaimed as the Dream Team of a new democratic era: nine prominent young academics and journalists named in 1996 to head Mexico’s first independent body to oversee elections.

In a country renowned for electoral fraud, the Federal Electoral Institute opened a new chapter, organizing a widely praised midterm vote in 1997.

Today, it is the Dream Team itself that is in crisis. Mexico’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has been boycotting the autonomous government body for more than three months.

The PRI accuses the eight-man, one-woman board of favoring the opposition. PRI critics see it differently: The ruling party, they say, is trying to weaken an independent institution that it cannot control.

“This situation is the most difficult the institute has experienced,” said Jose Woldenberg, a mild-mannered, bespectacled scholar who is president of the board.

Woldenberg knows what it’s like to be under siege. Twenty years ago, he was briefly jailed for union activism. Later, he helped found a left-wing newspaper, La Jornada, that criticized the political system controlled by the PRI since 1929.

However, it is as a government official that Woldenberg is facing his biggest challenge: building a pillar of Mexico’s democracy.

“For many years, one of the fundamental problems of elections was some parties’ lack of confidence in the organizers,” he said. “This institute was created to radiate confidence. If that is eroded or damaged, the institute is in trouble.”

The crisis began at a meeting of the board Nov. 16. The liaison from the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, asked the electoral board to add an unscheduled item to its agenda: a proposed investigation of the PRI’s finances in the 1994 presidential campaign. Seven of the nine councilors voted to discuss the matter. The PRI liaison to the board, Enrique Ibarra, was livid. Several members had previously indicated that they were biased against the PRI, he charged.

The proposal for an investigation of the PRI’s finances was sent to an institute subcommission for study. Ibarra says no inquiry is necessary because the 1994 campaign spending was approved by authorities.

The PRD disagrees: It maintains that new information indicates that the PRI spent well above the $40-million limit for a presidential campaign.

The PRI appealed the issue to Mexico’s Electoral Tribunal, the nation’s highest electoral authority, which ruled that the subcommission had the right to consider an inquiry.

Yet the PRI has not backed down. It has hinted that it may try to impeach the electoral board members, who were nominated and approved by all parties in Congress. The PRI’s boycott continues.

“This is an election maneuver by all of the opposition” aimed at discrediting the PRI, Ibarra said.

Members of the electoral board, all of whom are full-time employees, deny that they are partisan. They note that they are barred from membership in a political party and that their appointments were approved by legislators.

Critics say the PRI is attacking the board because it is outraged that it can no longer control the electoral process.

The PRI has held the presidency and most top government posts for seven decades.

“Never in the history of Mexico have presidential elections been organized by an independent institute,” said Emilio Zebadua, one of the board members who has been criticized by the PRI. “This has the government worried.”

The PRI could be wounded by an investigation of the 1994 campaign. If the electoral board finds wrongdoing, it can impose penalties as severe as suspending a party from competing.

Few expect such drastic action, but the PRI’s prestige could be further eroded just as it gears up for the presidential race in 2000.

To Woldenberg, the issue is whether the PRI will follow the rules of the new electoral system, even when the party disagrees with them. He said the PRI can appeal decisions to the Electoral Tribunal, which has the last word.

However, he added, the PRI can’t pressure an autonomous government body to change a ruling.

“The decisions made by the council are not negotiable,” he said.