The party that is a farce; PVEM leadership ruled illegal; a look into its past reveals political opportunism, nepotism, Salinas sycophancy.

For many of Mexico's environmentalists, Sept. 3 was a bittersweet day, payback time for a party that chewed up its idealism and energy and spat them out to concentrate power in one family.

On that date, the federal electoral tribunal (TEPJF) ruled that the leadership of Green Party (PVEM) was illegal, and that the party's statutes violated the electoral code and the Constitution. The PVEM was ordered to modify its statutes within 60 days and given another six months to replace or renew its leadership under new election procedures.

The tribunal made public what PVEM dissidents and many environmentalists knew already: namely that PVEM statutes safeguard discretional management in decision-making without consulting party rank and file.

In the words of the federal watchdog: "It is evident that the procedure followed ... for the selection of the members of its directive bodies, did not comply with the minimum conditions for democracy. For, among other things, it gave no opportunity to party members to know what were the requisites to compete in leadership elections; nor did it allow all party members ... to participate in the election of their leaders, since only a small group of party members participated in that process."

ANATOMY OF A POWER GRAB

Party founder and president Jorge Gonzalez Torres has enjoyed unique powers over the last decade and privileges that make his counterparts' powers in the National Action Party (PAN). Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) or the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) pale by comparison.

Among his powers, Gonzalez Torres named the party's representatives and secretaries, single-handedly decided how to spend resources granted by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), and chose when to call the PVEM National Assembly (which he sometimes held in his home, according to party dissident Jose Luis Amador). He also held the power to veto the party's majority decisions and called for his own re-election as many times as he deemed necessary.

Article 16 of the PVEM statutes, approved by the IFE in 1993, states: "The President of the National Executive Commission will have the widest powers and responsibilities for the realization of all operations of the PVEM."

It allows him to punish or reward any party member and revoke the decisions of state and municipal committees. It makes him the decisive voice in coalitions, political pacts and selection of candidates. Moreover, he can determine who will succeed him in the job, and he can move to expel any member that he deems "a threat of political risk for the party."

DADDY'S BOY STOMPS HIS FOOT

Two years ago Gonzalez Torres--a wealthy businessman who previously had served as a PRI leader in the capital--handed over these powers to his son. Jorge Emilio Gonzalez Martinez. The notorious, 31-year-old "Nino Verde," widely ridiculed as an "hijo de papi" and mocked for his temper tantrums, has sped through a political career--from Mexico City assemblyman to federal deputy to his current post as senator.

A couple of weeks after the Sept. 3 ruling. IFE's Fiscal Commission also charged the party with irregular financing of the Alliance for Change--a coalition between the PAN and the PVEM in the 2000 election campaign. On Oct. 6, the two parties were fined 545 million pesos for failing to report 91 million pesos to the electoral authority. The PAN will pay 361 million pesos of the fine, and the PVEM will pay the rest.

The swaggering Sen. Gonzalez was defiant, calling the fine government persecution and declaring, "To stop us, they will have to kill us first." He said the government is dedicated to destroying the PVEM because, "for them it would be highly dangerous that the party reaches 7% of the vote by 2006."

The party has long been the object of criticism in the public arena for its flagrant nepotism. The outspoken dissident Amador presented a formal complaint to the IFE in February last year and another in April to the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) denouncing the statutes that allow the party president to behave as a de facto monarch. He has given examples of friends of "Nino Verde" who have become senators and staff--from domestic help, gardeners, drivers and secretaries--who have been appointed to political office on the local and federal level.

GREEN STANDS FOR MONEY

Now backed by a legal victory, Amador's complaints expose the means by which this party has been managed as a family birthright.

Since its inception as the Partido Verde Mexicano in 1986, the Greens have tended to inspire either a shrug, shudder or a snigger. Its members are usually considered mere lackeys to other political interests and have sometimes spurred concern for their rumored use of thugs.

The sanctions imposed on the Alliance for Change are cause for jubilation among those who have been disillusioned by the Greens' transparent opportunism in the past. Many remember that just before President Fox's first State of the Union address in September 2001, the PVEM trumpeted their split with Fox and the PAN, a move that came a day after four national opinion polls showed a marked decline in Fox's popularity.

At the time, PAN General Secretary Jorge Osejo said, "We won't lose any sleep" over the rupture and added dismissively that father and son were "people interested in quotas and booty." Other politicians were openly harsh. PAN Sen. Felipe Calderon, who was recently appointed Energy secretary, suggested that the decision was due to "rancor and frustration of some who saw change as the opportunity to share in the loot."

LINKS TO SALINAS 

So why have the Gonzalez family and Mexico's official Green party generated such ridicule and rancor?

Reports published in September have begun to suggest what former militants have been saying for a long time. The supposed ecologists' party had politically dodgy credentials from the start. Reports in Mexico's daily El Independiente quoted Leon Konic, former leader of the Greens in the State of Mexico, as saying the Gonzalez family was actually instructed to start the party, indirectly (via Manuel Camacho Solis, who was then mayor of Mexico City) by Carlos Salinas.

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And are the Greens finally getting their comeuppance?

The immediate result of the rulings has been widespread dissent within the party. On Sept. 29. PVEM deputies, headed by Carlos Macias, filed a political suit in the Chamber of Deputies against the "Nino Verde" for having assumed his post as party president illegally. The group also called for the withdrawal of parliamentary privileges of Sens. Sara Isabel Castellanos, Veronica Velasco, Gloria Lavara, Emilia Patricia Gomez and Dep. Alejandro Agundis.

Macias said the federal watchdog's September ruling represented a significant advance for Mexican politics and would strengthen democratization in political parties.

However, columnist Miguel Angel Granados argued in Reforma newspaper in early September that it was absurd to leave the onus for correcting the "grotesque lack of internal democracy" in the hands of the current PVEM leadership. He speculated that next May, when the time is up for reform, the new PVEM leaders will be those who are in place now.

Shanti Lesur, the founder of the Greens in Morelos who resigned from the party in 1991, agreed.

"This public censure has been good, but ultimately it's still the same people at the helm," she told BUSINESS MEXICO.

However, she welcomed in particular the exposure of the origins of the party as a Salinista invention--a party that would steal votes away from the opposition.

Lesur said one of the principal reasons the Salinas government supported forming this party was the signing of Nafta.

"Many ecologists were worried that toxic waste would be allowed to be dumped in Mexico, and that Nafta would have negative environmental repercussions," she said. "So it looked good and democratic for Mexico to have a Green party."

The former activist said her suspicions were aroused when Gonzalez Torres told her in 1991 that "although this is an opposition party, it will have the support of the government."

The Green party has been largely mute--with the exception of Sen. Gonzalez Martinez's vague comments of defiance--in regard to the various charges leveled against it in the last few months. Phone calls to the party leadership for this story were not returned.