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Mexico Elections: Detestable Green Party Reflects Mexico's Weak Democracy

by Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez

source mexicovoices

Some say that Flaubert's letters were his masterpiece. More than his novels, writing comes alive in his letters; you can see critical spark, irony and venom. In one of them I find he confesses his deep antipathy for political parties.

"I have no sympathy for any political party, rather, I hate them all, because I believe they are all equally limited, false, puerile, employees of the ephemeral, without a joint vision and without ever rising beyond what is helpful. I hate all forms of despotism. I am a rabid liberal."

It is gratifying to transcribe these words. Make them my own as I rewrite them. Detestable parties: snakes, deceitful, short sighted, trivial parties. But not all parties are equally detestable. In today’s Mexico there is one that stands above the rest, more loathsome and odious than the rest. To me, the Green Party [Green Ecologist Party of Mexico, PVEM], is, as Jorge Alcocer [Mexican economist and political activist], called it, a despicable party.

I am not alone in my dislike. This will be the umpteenth article published in recent weeks expressing disgust against the policies of this organization determined to circumvent the law and corrupt democracy. There are voices calling for the cancellation of its registration. All that’s left is to expel it from the competition, they say.

If this party infuriates so many it’s, in all honesty, because it represents not only a particularly abhorrent side of Mexican politics, but also because it has found, in the national mess, clues to a noticeable efficacy. Faced with the general discrediting of politics and the pluralist regime itself, the Green Party leaders have designed a communication strategy that works. Yes, it’s illegal. Yes, it’s grossly demagogic. But it seems, so far, successful. I have no doubt that the Green Party threatens Mexico’s precarious democratic system from within. It does so because it projects daily the shamelessness of impunity. Or, rather, the rationality of abuse.

How is it that an organization that collects fines and reprimands from the electoral authority [National Electoral Institute, INE] is still going strong, insisting on its transgressive strategy? Why does a fraudulent organization thrive? This one is without a doubt: it presents itself before us as the Green Party when it has defended the death penalty, when it ignores the practical consequences of its demagogic initiatives. Unknown by international environmental organizations, it continues to present itself here as if it were.

The governor of Chiapas [Manuel Velasco Coello], the party’s most senior politician, can behave like a foreman who publicly beats his slaves [in public, he hit a subordinate who had not done as he wished] and continue on his merry way. What I mean to say is that criticism of this political group cannot be separated from the criticism of our public life in the broadest sense.

I don’t want to write another article against this detestable party. I want to try to understand its place in the decaying stage of our politics. The Green Party is another syndrome of our battered democracy. Today, it’s definitely the PRI’s hope to gain control of the Chamber of Deputies in the next legislature. A vote for the Green Party is just that: an endorsement of the government party. Not surprisingly, given the unpopularity of the President and the disgrace of his party, the ruling group is trying to hide behind a new look. But government support doesn’t fully explain the Green Party’s communication success. I believe this organization is a metaphor for a crucial failure of our pluralism [multi-party system].

We suffer from a dysfunctional pluralism because it’s not able to correct itself. The Green Party’s daily mockery of the arbitrator [INE] is the perfect example. The democratic expectation is that violation of the rules would not only be costly in monetary terms but also in terms of public image. No party would want to appear as a cheater. But the punishment is not a deterrent. Paying fines and looking like a scammer doesn’t bother the leaders of the Green Party. Violating the law is a reasoned calculation. The penalty is a simple surcharge added to its squandering. Their communication, omnipresent, aggressive and direct, has trivialized its abuses.

They continue to present themselves as avengers that punish kidnappers with life imprisonment and saviors of animals suffering in circuses [Mexico has outlawed the use of animals in circuses]. Their demagoguery, we must admit, works. If the Green Party is so detestable it is because it reminds us of the poor quality of our democracy, because it exhibits the weakness of our institutions, the superficiality of public demands and consenting to cheaters.

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