MEXICO CITY (May 10th) - An unfunny thing happened to U.S. activist Ted Lewis on his way to Mexico City the other day (April 9th) - he was either deported, expelled, or refused admittance to or from Mexico, depending upon whose version one consults. Lewis, the director of the Mexico project for the San Francisco California-based NGO Global Exchange, had flown into country to pick up documentation from the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) accrediting him as an observer in upcoming July 2nd presidential balloting here, when he was stopped by immigration authorities during a plane change in Guadalajara and charged with violating conditions of the tourist visa the same authorities had just issued him, because the purpose of his trip was to pick up the IFE accreditation. Lewis, who has flown into Mexico dozens of times in the past few years on Global Exchange business, was startled by the expulsion - having coordinated the NGO's observation teams in 1994 and 1997 federal elections here, he knew that the only way to guarantee observer status is to fly into Mexico as a tourist and then apply to the IFE for the appropriate credentials. The Mexican consulate in Sam Francisco does not even have FM-3 observation forms on hand, Lewis complained in a recent electronic correspondence - he has been trying to negotiate immigration status for 34 prospective Global Exchange observers for weeks. The Mexican government insists that it welcomes "responsible" foreign observers for the July 2nd election - a category that Global, which produced critical evaluations of the 1994 and 1997 Mexican elections, apparently does not qualify for. One reason for the roadblock may be the NGO's revamped methodology in appraising the legitimacy of Mexico's notoriously fraud-riddled electoral process.
Acutely aware that vote buying and lopsided media coverage in favor of the long-ruling (71 years) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which has never lost a presidential election, takes place long before ballots are cast, Global observers are taking a more integral and long-range look at the upcoming vote - even inviting Mexican voter watchdog groups, such as Alianza Civica (Civic Alliance), the pioneer Mexican NGO working to clean up elections, to California for the Super Tuesday primaries in March to take a look at how the U.S. voting process works. Such cross-pollination irks the Mexican government and the party that has run it for seven decades. Indeed, immigration sub-secretary Angel Pescador attacks Global Exchange as "meddlers" who promote "revolutionary tourism" and immigration authorities have expelled dozens of visitors the NGO has brought to country for "reality tours" of impoverished regions - Mexico has booted over 400 international human rights observers out of Chiapas since the 1994 rebellion of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in that southern state. The governmentıs crackdown on incommodious foreign observers just 50 days before a presidential election in which the PRI faces a stiff challenge from the opposition, raises suspicions here that the government and the official party are preparing to win the nip and tuck July 2nd balloting by any means necessary - licit or not. The government's refusal to allow Ted Lewis into Mexico is an "ominous sign" that the PRI intends to steal the upcoming vote, worries IFE citizen counsel member Jaime Cardenas - the council will supervise the election.
The PRIıs candidate Francisco Labastida, outgoing President Ernesto Zedillo's hand-picked choice, is facing a stiff challenge from the right wing National Action (PAN) Party standard-bearer, the flamboyant Vicente Fox. Mid-April polls put Fox just three points behind Labastida with graph lines on the rise while the PRI candidate plummeted seven points since March polling - the April polls were taken before a six candidate presidential debate that Fox won hands down, triggering panic in PRI inner circles.
When pressed in presidential elections by the opposition, the ruling party has often resorted to massive fraud to retain power - such was the scenario in 1929, 1940, 1952, and, most memorably, in 1988 when leftist Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, an also ran now in 2000, won the popular vote but had victory stolen from him in a count that featured a mysterious eight-day computer "crash." As the distance between Labastida and Fox narrows to nothing, the memory of 1988 casts a long shadow over the July 2nd election. Ted Lewis's expulsion is certainly not the only portent of fraud to come. When the IFE, an autonomous institution that seeks to break from lingering government control, issued a series of television spots aimed at discouraging vote buying, Mexico's two-headed TV monopoly simply refused to run them.
The commercials, which depict a puppet being manipulated by unseen hands, and warn that conditioning government services such as housing and electricity upon one's vote, is a crime, have been rejected because the IFE does not qualify for government public service time explains the National Radio &Television Chamber (CIRT.) The networks' veto of the IFE anti-vote buying campaign, which was supposed to begin months ago, has already resulted in the cancellation of 1800 showings of the spots with no solution in sight before election day. In recent Mexican elections, notably the governor's race in Guerrero state in February 1999, PRI vote buying has been the backbone of ruling party victory - the Guerrero debacle was so blatant that the opposition mounted a mobile "Museum of the Bribe." Similarly, television coverage of the campaigns has been heavily weighted against the opposition. Both Televisa and TV Azteca, which owe their empires to government concessions, have devoted over 40% of all election news broadcast time to the fortunes of the PRI, leaving five other parties to divide up the rest, reports IFE citizen council member Jacquelin Pechard. Out in the provinces, PRI domination of electronic media is even more dramatic. In Chiapas, the ruling party receives 76% of all coverage, according to monitoring done by the Alianza Civica.
Over on the print side, coverage is just as skewed. Chiapas governor Roberto Albores was recently overheard on an intercepted telephone call instructing his press chief to assure eight column headlines in the stateıs dailies affirming that Labastida had won the April 25th debate with Fox. The next morning, virtually every paper in Chiapas ran eight column headlines to that effect. The ruling party, which has taken to calling itself the "new" PRI, has some new media tricks up its old sleeve for July 2nd. For the first time in Mexican presidential elections, the PRI is investing heavily in negative advertising spots depicting Fox as inept and opportunistic. Heavy-handed distribution of paid-for polls is another earmark of the official party's dirty tricks campaign - one such survey, showing Labastida with a fictitious 16 point lead, was conducted for the Mexican subsidiary of Pearson Research by Stanley Greenberg, political operator for Bill Clinton insider James Carville, who is under contract to the PRI as a high-powered consultant.
Aside from having the media in its corner, the PRI enjoys advantages that foreign observers, particularly those who fly in just for election day, will never see. Campaign financing, for instance, seriously unlevels the playing field. Although the presidential campaign is publically financed, the PRI harvests millions in private contributions that go unchecked by the IFE - in 1994, Zedillo accumulated a warchest of at least $25 million USD from bankers who had looted their newly privatized banks and then fled the country. The banks were then bailed out by a Zedillo-established fund that taxpayers will be burdened with for the next 30 years.
Because presidential elections often spawn peso devaluation and economic crisis, Mexico applied for and received $23 billion USD in credits from the International Monetary Fund and four other international lending institutions, a boodle that effectively eliminates the shakiness of the economy as an electoral issue, and allows countless millions in deferred foreign debt payments to be plowed into PRI vote buying projects such as the payment of Procampo agricultural subsidy checks just in time for the July 2nd balloting. The PRI patronage machine is the principle reason why the Mexican ruling party remains the longest-running political dynasty in the known universe. Observers who key in on election day shenanigans will probably not notice the absence at the polls of Mexicans living outside of the country, mostly in the U.S. Last year, the PRI senate majority killed a bill that would have permitted between three and seven million out-of-country Mexicans to cast ballots July 2nd. Because most expatriate Mexicans have already voted against PRI political and economic policies with their feet, their votes seemed overwhelmingly destined for the opposition. Now, with 50 days to go until election day, those three million votes (minimum) represent the difference in who wins the Mexican presidency July 2nd.
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Dr. Ross earned his Doctorate in Mexican Electoral Fraud during Cuauhtemoc Cardenas's foiled 1988 campaign. You too can subscribe to Mexico Barbaro - Write David Wilson at nicadlw@earthlink.net for the juicy details. You can Reach Dr. Ross in Mexico City at: 525-510-3376 johnross@igc.apc.org