Mexico’s PRI: Still Corrupt

Two years ago, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost the presidency for the first time in more than seven decades. In a small act of contrition, the party’s leadership told the citizenry it got the message and would mend its ways. The overhaul was supposed to start with a shining internal election for the next party head. Last month’s vote demonstrated only that the party is hopelessly corrupt.

The two candidates pulled out every dirty campaign trick in the book, then each accused the other of widespread ballot rigging. Those charges may have been the only honest aspect of the election. To produce the number of votes recorded at some places, for example, voters would have had to move through the booths at a rate of one every 30 seconds. In some places, one candidate got 120% of the vote--an infamous PRI phenomenon known as the “Soviet booth.”

Fair election or not, the controversial Roberto Madrazo is the PRI’s new president--and the party’s most likely candidate for Mexico’s presidency in 2006. When he ran for governor of Tabasco, his people engaged in intimidation, bought votes and stuffed ballot boxes to get him elected. Worse, Madrazo allegedly spent millions of dollars beyond the established campaign limits. And the local electoral authorities did nothing to stop him.

It’s hard to imagine that the next presidential election will be a repeat of past fraudulent elections. The national agency charged with overseeing the vote did a thorough review of widespread cheating techniques, then bolstered the system with elaborate controls. For instance, every voter has an official identification card with his or her picture, which is reproduced on lists at the voting booths. And four trained officials, assigned at random, watch over every booth alongside representatives from each party.

The one remaining problem is that in Mexico, as in the United States, campaign financing continues to corrode the democratic process. So the government would be smart to give its election oversight agency the ability to track transactions in private banks and the treasury whenever there was credible suspicion that an individual or corporation was illegally financing a campaign. Beyond that, the PRI’s inability to clean up its own act undermines the hard work that President Vicente Fox, of the opposition PAN party, has done to polish the country’s image. Mexico’s Congress and the election agency need to nudge the nation back on course.