Reforms Face Acid Test in Mexico’s ‘Most Open’ Election Ever

In a nation where the ruling party’s vote rigging spawned an entire lexicon of election trickery, Mexico’s voters will do more than choose a new president July 2. They will test historic reforms that could produce the country’s cleanest election ever.

An independent federal election agency has spent $350 million to boost public financing for underdog campaigns. It has designed private voting booths, trained nearly 800,000 civilian poll watchers and plugged into the Internet to broadcast results instantly. And it has blanketed the country with assurances that votes will be “free and secret.”

“The conditions for this election are better than for any previous elections,” said Jose Woldenberg, who heads the Federal Electoral Institute. The U.S. State Department earlier this month added its endorsement, declaring the campaign “the most open in Mexico’s history.”

But in the home stretch, signs of voter manipulation at the hands of the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have abruptly become the hottest--and potentially decisive--issue in what remains a remarkably competitive race.

Widespread praise for the electoral innovations, part of a reform package approved in 1996, is bumping up against growing concern that the vote may be tarnished long before the first ballot is marked.

Mexican activists and international observers charge that the PRI is reviving time-tested ploys to continue its 71-year hold on power amid a fierce challenge from Vicente Fox of the pro-business National Action Party, or PAN. Alleged PRI tactics include putting the squeeze on some impoverished rural aid recipients, giving away free bicycles and sewing machines, and pressuring public employees to get out the vote for PRI candidate Francisco Labastida.

Members of the election institute also complain that the nation’s broadcasters have favored Labastida.

Worries About Influence Peddling

Critics say the PRI’s tactics undercut the benefits of the reforms, which aimed to make elections cleaner in large part by taking them out of the hands of the governing party and applying closer controls on campaign spending. Almost everyone agrees that the improvements render unlikely widespread cheating on election day. The concern is about influence-buying before the voting begins.

“You can have a system that does a good job of counting the votes. But what occurs months earlier is what is dangerous,” said Elodia Gutierrez, a legislator from Fox’s party who heads a congressional committee looking into misuse of public funds in the presidential campaign. The committee has received 117 formal complaints, most dealing with alleged misuse of government rural aid programs and nearly all centering on the PRI.

One complaint included photographs of a PRI congressional candidate in the state of Puebla greeting voters and handing out corn flour at a store that provides federally subsidized goods for impoverished rural dwellers. Another accused administrators from a welfare program, called Progresa, of summoning 1,500 rural residents to a meeting and then launching into a testimonial for Labastida.

Foreign election observers laud the steps taken to protect against tricks of the past, during which ballot boxes were stolen and votes cast using the names of deceased people. The glossary of vote rigging came to include the “carousel” of PRI sympathizers who went from polling station to polling station, voting each time, and the “pregnant ballot box,” stuffed with PRI ballots.

But observers say modern-day manipulation is more subtle--and harder to police--than the crude stuffing of ballot boxes. Polls show that many peasants associate crucial government aid with the PRI. Other residents express concern that their villages may be singled out for cuts in benefits if the local vote favors the opposition, according to election observers.

John Foster, who toured the Mexican countryside as part of a Canadian delegation, said it was difficult to prove coercion or gauge the effect on the vote count. “But in a close election, it could have a great impact,” he said.

Polls show Labastida and Fox running neck and neck, with a third candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, trailing.

Woldenberg said such long-standing PRI tactics as handouts--potent tools in a country where 40% of residents are poor--probably are isolated. The federal prosecutor who specializes in election crimes said that, of 325 complaints lodged this year, only nine warranted criminal charges. About half of the accusations were for altering the voter registry or illegally issuing voter cards.

Woldenberg called the introduction of private voting booths, complete with curtains, at the 114,000 voting sites “an antidote” to coercion. “What we are telling people who are very needy is, ‘Take the gift, and vote for who you want,’ ” he said in an interview.

Older Generation Often Honor-Bound

That may be easier said than done. Mexicans place great importance on honoring even informal contracts--and that can include their votes.

“You may be a Cardenista at heart, or you may be fed up with the PRI and fascinated by Fox. But when you take something, particularly if you’re an older person, you’re honor-bound to vote” for them, said Daniel Lund, president of the Mexico City-based polling firm MUND.

The Labastida campaign and federal officials insist that they are following the rules. Social Development Minister Carlos Jarque, who oversees a vast network of welfare programs, including Progresa, said officials would have a hard time swapping aid for votes because rolls have been closed to new recipients since December--the routine cutoff for the annual sign-up.

Agriculture Minister Romarico Arroyo Marroquin said the government publishes the names of farmers who get grants for tractors or irrigation gear--and the amounts-- to provide public disclosure. He said farm aid is increasingly administered by the states, more than a third of which are now in opposition hands.

The election institute has asked the federal government to stop publicizing its programs in the weeks before the election but has received no response. “It is perfectly valid--it is an obligation--to inform the public about what we do,” Arroyo said. “Good policies are good politics.”

Election institute officials were incensed when the federal government declined to step in after a group of the nation’s largest broadcasters refused to grant free government air time for spots the agency had produced concerning voter rights. The industry group, which argued that the agency should pay, eventually agreed to air the spots and hash out the payment issue after the election. But election officials complain that they lost valuable publicity time.

The institute also has criticized broadcasters, which it says devote an uneven share of time to Labastida’s campaign. The agency has monitored radio and television programs for months. It reported last month that between Jan. 19 and May 6, the PRI had received 37% of air time, compared with 26% for the PAN. The study showed fairly balanced coverage early on but a growing gap favoring the PRI. The impact of television is huge: It is the main source of political news and increasingly free of the government’s yoke.

“They try to give better information. They try to be more objective. But the [government] pressures persist,” said Miguel Acosta, who heads a media-monitoring program for the independent Mexican Human Rights Academy. The academy’s study also shows the PRI gaining dominance of the air waves in the final weeks before the election.

The imbalance in coverage is worse in the hinterlands. Television executives here in the capital say they are too obsessed with competition to favor any candidate. At Televisa, the country’s largest network, news directors have instructed reporters to allot equal time to the three main candidates. Executives say the network has shed the partisanship of former owner Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, who reportedly once declared himself “a soldier” of the PRI. His son, Emilio Azcarraga Jean, has vowed absolute impartiality.

“Our credibility in the end depends on how we do in this election,” said Leopoldo Gomez, vice president for news and a former ranking federal energy official.

Some analysts have noted that even when candidates get equal time on Mexico’s airwaves, Labastida gets more positive stories and Fox receives more negative treatment.

Charges of bias have spread to newspapers. An editor at the News, an English-language publication, said this week that the newspaper had banned Fox coverage, but the president of the company that owns the newspaper denied that it had.

Nonetheless, Cardenas said news coverage has gotten more fair since 1988, when he lost to the PRI in an election marred by a reported breakdown in the computer as votes were being tallied. Many remain convinced that a Cardenas victory was stolen.

This time, Cardenas is on television daily. In 1988, he recalled recently, he was interviewed on television just twice.

The 1996 public financing reforms have improved paid access to television. For the first time, opposition parties can afford to buy commercials. Under the federal funding formula, the coalition of parties allied with Cardenas will get more public campaign money than the PRI. During the presidential vote six years ago, the PRI got more than half the money.

The reforms have cheered experts overseas who see in the 2000 election a watershed moment in Mexico’s gradual move toward full democracy. Mexican activists offer a more mixed outlook.

“There is a lot of gray here,” said Acosta of the human rights academy. “It’s cleaner than other elections but not as clean as we would like.”

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Times staff writers James F. Smith and Mary Beth Sheridan contributed to this report.