IFE faces major challenges refereeing
Mexico’s political games
By Kenneth
Emmond
As the referee in the rough-and-tumble world of Mexico’s
politics, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has one of the nation’s toughest jobs.
A key step forward – or backward, as the case
may be – in Mexico’s quest for democracy will be determined by its performance in the months leading up to next
July’s federal elections.
The IFE broke new ground in 2000 when it ran a mostly
clean election. There were complaints from all sides but none serious enough to call the results into question.
Later, when it discovered that there had been horrendous
violations of the rules governing campaign fundraising, it levied stiff fines on the parties involved.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is only
now making the final payment on its billion-peso fine for orchestrating Pemexgate, a scandal that involved a massive transfer
of funds to party accounts from Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil monopoly. The National Action Party (PAN)
was also heavily fined for accepting money from abroad through candidate Vicente Fox’s “Amigos de Fox” organization.
Big fines were levied all around following the 2003
interim elections, when every party exceeded the spending cap.
This time around the IFE wants to consolidate past
gains, and to apply the lessons learned to take the elections to a new level of fairness and transparency.
Its main strategy is to nip irregularities in the
bud. The power to levy fines remains, and amendments to the law governing its operations give it new powers to audit political
party finances. All of which the IFE hopes will be enough to discourage cheating.
“The IFE is guaranteeing the most detailed
and complete auditing ever, but it must be complemented by responsible actions by the parties,” Andres Albo, head of
the IFE’s audit commission, said last week.
Albo said the IFE’s reports would be made public,
so that “citizens will know how much money the candidates spent before the election, how many minutes their advertisements
were on television.”
As part of the registration process – and this
includes elections for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, as well as the Presidency – each political party must
sign a waiver giving the IFE access to its bank accounts.
That may seem like a small point, but it sidesteps
the Bank Secrecy Law, which was previously invoked to prevent the IFE from reconciling reported revenues with bank statements.
Each party must file interim financial reports to
the IFE every 60 days – on March 30, May 30, and July 31 – so that irregularities can be spotted early.
It’s also prohibiting television stations from
offering discounts to their favorite party: all parties are to get the same deal when purchasing spots.
In its role as referee, the IFE faces criticism from
many directions.
Controversy began in November 2003, when the new
slate of board members was chosen. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) walked out of the meetings in a huff, thereby
giving up its opportunity to choose some members.
There were doubts about the neutrality of the new
IFE chairman, Carlos Ugalde, a PRI member, and his ability to stand up to party pressures, but so far these have proved groundless.
The IFE is being criticized for the paltry response
from the millions of expatriates, who for the first time can vote without having to return home.
The PRD wailed loudest when the IFE imposed a “tregua,”
or Christmas truce, to suspend virtually all campaigning from Dec. 11 to Jan. 18.
If the election process goes well and the IFE consolidates
its role as electoral watchdog, what will be the next step on the road to building Mexico’s fledgling democracy?
Actually there is one sizable hole in the dike. It
is to ensure that state electoral boards achieve the same level of competence as that of the federal institute.
A glaring example of this problem emerged last year
in the State of Mexico elections. The entire board of the Electoral Institute of the State of Mexico (IEEM) resigned in mid-campaign
when it emerged that some members received kickbacks from the company that won the bid to provide the voting boxes. There
have also been problems in Sinaloa and Veracruz.
Crying “foul!” in the days following
an election is an integral part of Mexican politics. But if all parties are complaining about their treatment at the hands
of the IFE, it will be an important indicator that the referee has been even-handed in overseeing the electoral process.
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Kenneth Emmond, an economist, market consultant and
journalist who has lived in Mexico since 1995, is also a columnist with MexiData.info.
He can be reached via e-mail at Kemmond00@yahoo.com.
