Mexico promises clean and fair election

Mexico promises clean and fair election

JAKARTA (JP): Improving relations, signing agreements and
exchanging views on issues are one part of an ambassador's job.

The other part, according to Mexican Ambassador Jorge Palacios
Trevino, is "introducing your country to the people of the
country where you are assigned".

This is exactly what Palacios did when he started to explain
to The Jakarta Post about the upcoming presidential and
legislative elections in his country Aug. 21.

"We are making a big effort to make it a clean and credible
election so there won't be any claims of fraud from opposition
parties," he said.

"This year's elections will be the best-ever prepared in the
history of Mexico."

To achieve this goal, he said, the country has made a giant
step towards amending electoral legislation, as many as three
times over the last five years.

The amendments were made to improve the institutions in charge
of the elections, increase the autonomy of electoral authorities,
create new surveillance bodies and adopt new ways to certify the
elections, he said.

As a result, it was decided that the elections would be
prepared, organized, conducted, observed and certified by an
independent institution. "I expect the elections will be
transparent and clean, since the government will not be
organizing or judging them," Palacios said.

Another crucial point are the public debates transmitted
nation-wide on TV screens and radios.

"For the first time in the political history of Mexico, there
was a public debate between candidates for the presidency... and
the rating of the debate was very high: more than 30 million
Mexicans watched it on TV," he said.

Their efforts even went as far as involving experts from the
United Nations to assist in the technical aspects of the
elections. "We have invited them to acknowledge whether we are
conducting our elections correctly or not... Not to judge us from
a political point of view, because the elections, of course, are
something exclusively for the Mexicans," he said.

Even funding for presidential campaigns is limited to US$42
million per candidate.

So far, nine political parties have officially registered
their respective candidates, making it the most contested
presidential election in the history of Mexico.

A certain amount of government resources are provided to
support the activities of the parties and additional income can
be obtained from various sources provided they do not exceed the
limit regulated by the law.

But why are the Mexicans willing to go through all this pain?

Apparently, it is for no surprising reason and came as a
result of a long process.

"People have become more and more politically interested...
They are interested in the elections and no longer want to just
vote or listen. They want to participate," Palacios pointed out.

To prove his point, he said that out of the 47 million
citizens eligible to vote (52.2 percent of the country's 90
million-population), more than 44 million have registered and
currently possess new identification cards.

These cards, which according to him were "very modern and
impossible to counterfeit" were specially designed for the
voters.

"People are interested in the elections now. That's why we
simply have to do the best," Palacios concluded. (pwn)