Mexico & Nafta - 11 November 2003

Two of the opposition political parties and most of the press have criticised the government's choice of new electoral commissioners Of the nine commissioners, five were nominees from the biggest party in congress, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), and four were named by the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), to which President Vicente Fox belongs. The Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) is responsible for all federal elections in the country.

The IFE, under its outgoing president, José Woldenberg, has been one of the key institutions in the country's democratic transition. It was only set up in its current form in 1994 and the outgoing board was empanelled in 1996. It scores highly in all the polls on which institutions are most trusted by Mexicans. The new board was picked by the lower chamber of congress.

The deal between the PRI and the PAN is very different from the way the last IFE board was chosen in 1996. Then, all the parties in congress agreed that the IFE must be independent, and worked hard to achieve this. Some of the strongest criticisms of the way the new IFE was appointed came from Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the mayor of Mexico City and the frontrunner for the 2006 presidency. He said that it was a step back to politicise the IFE.

López Obrador is the leading light of the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). This party, together with the Partido del Trabajo, criticised the composition of the new IFE board. López Obrador and his party believe that the deal between the two other major parties amounts to a carve-up. Other commentators point out that some of the names the PRD suggested were unacceptable as they were little more than party hacks. The PRD's big worry is that the new IFE will somehow thwart

López Obrador's presidential ambitions. The PRD's national president, Leonel Godoy, claims that the new board will do the bidding of the two big parties.

Some of the country's heavyweight commentators, notably Lorenzo Meyer, a political historian from the Colegio de México, said that the lower chamber had toyed with the one political institution in the country which had unquestioned credibility. He said that the politicians in the lower chamber had shown themselves to be second-rate, ignorant egoists.

Who is who
The new IFE president is Luis Carlos Ugalde Ramí­rez, the head of the prestigious Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (Cide). His first task will be to preside over the re-runs of congressional elections in Michoacán and Coahuila. These elections were originally held on 6 July but were annulled by the previous IFE for irregularities.

Ugalde Ramí­rez himself is a seen as a PRI partisan. He is close to the party president Roberto Madrazo, although he was connected with the energy ministry in the last PRI administration.This administration was run by Madrazo's antithesis, the technocratic President Ernesto Zedillo.

The naming of the new nine-person IFE board came at the last minute. The board had to be approved by congress and take office on 1 November. The PRD would have preferred at least some of the old board to have been reappointed, but the PRI and the PAN rejected this notion.

The most criticised appointment is that of Andrés Albo Márquez to the board. He is a banker who has little experience of the rough and tumble of elections. The appointment of Marí­a Teresa González Luna has also been heavily slated: she has proved to be a less than impartial electoral commissioner in the PAN-dominated state of Jalisco. Another controversial appointee is Marí­a de Lourdes López who as an electoral commissioner in Coahuila was accused of attempting to bribe a local official. The other woman, Alejandra Latapi, is an experienced PR woman with a long career at Burson Marsteller; she is currently advising several PRI deputies and the influential Consejo Coordinador Empresarial.

Less censured is the appointment of Rodrigo Morales Manzanares, who has a long experience of elections and sat on the board of the IFE's counterpart for Mexico City. Commentators confessed that they were amazed at the appointment of Marco Antonio Gómez Alcánta,a lawyer and noted adviser to foreign companies. Virgilio Andrade Martí­nez is a long-time Prií­sta and adviser to the now defunct Banrural. He is now a political commentator for CNN on Mexican politics. His father is one of the lawyers for Carlos Romero Deschamps, the PRI deputy and leader of the oilworkers union accused of siphoning money from the state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos to the PRI.

Even Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez comes with a bit of squiggle against his name. He is an academic at UNAM and an ex official at IFE responsible for prerogatives and political parties. In this post he helped to limit the scope of the IFE investigation into the Amigos de Fox, which financed President Fox's successful election campaign in 2000. He is known to be close to the PAN.

On top of the support of the PAN and the PRI the new IFE board was backed by the Partido Verde Ecologista de México.The PVEM fought the 2000 elections in partnership with the PAN and the midterm elections this year in partnership with the PRI.