Mexicans Would Not Be Bought or Coerced

“Take the gift, but vote as you please.” That was the advice dispensed to the Mexican people by opposition party candidates in the campaign just ended, as well as by the head of the independent Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE. But the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, incessantly delivered a starkly different message: “We’ve helped you; now you help us!”

Whose advice would the voters take? With the crushing defeat that they administered to the PRI, at all levels and in most parts of the country, the Mexican people gave their answer, loud and clear.

Americans would have difficulty imagining the intensity of the psychological warfare to which Mexicans were subjected during the campaign. They were alternately threatened and materially rewarded by PRI-affiliated public officials, from national party leaders on down to neighborhood-level vote promoters.

In Peto, a town of about 22,000, the PRI-ista state governor gave thousands of families cement floors for their houses, each emblazoned with his name and the logo of a major federal government program closely identified with the PRI. Many residents received portable washing machines, bicycles, sewing machines and corn grinders from the state government in the run-up to the elections. Two days before the election, the PRI municipal government distributed tons of free corn and rice. Dozens of pigs and cattle were slaughtered to provide meat for elaborate meals to which voters were invited, after they had done their duty.

Yet in Peto and every other small town that I visited in Yucatan, residents had also been systematically threatened by the PRI. The party’s operatives had gone door-to-door asking people for the numbers of their IFE-issued voter credentials. This was a shameless intimidation tactic: Once the voter’s name and credential number had been taken down, she was likely to feel committed to voting for the PRI because the computer would know how she voted.

Rumor-mongering was rampant: If the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, won the election, all major social welfare programs would be terminated. Scholarships for schoolchildren and milk rations for infants would be taken away. The era of slavery on large haciendas would return. The PRI would know how votes were cast because secret cameras would be installed in polling places.

Remarkably, a large majority of Mexicans resisted the relentless psych-war. Only 1 out of 3 succumbed to fear, intimidation and vote-buying.

The Mexican people have passed a huge test of civic and political maturity with flying colors. They and the IFE, whose nine citizen councilors courageously and tenaciously defended the reformed electoral system put into place in the 1990s, deserve full credit.

Yet the IFE needs to have its regulatory powers expanded to enable it to police against the kinds of abuses that were rampant in the 2000 campaign. And the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Electoral Crimes, part of Mexico’s Ministry of Justice, must be thoroughly overhauled to increase the probability of punishment for individuals and political parties that commit such infractions.

Mexico’s protracted and highly uneven transition to a fully democratic system should now advance to completion.