The national leadership of
Mexico’s Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) has announced a strategy
to prevent the infiltration of organized
crime and illicit funding during
the 2012 election cycle.
PRI president Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, a senator from the state of
Quintana Roo, said that the
party’s new strategy document contains all the necessary measures to ensure a
clean campaign. It will be mandatory for all PRI candidates to abide by the new
rules – even presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto.
Specifically, Joaquín Coldwell announced the creation of a Financial
Supervisory Commission (Comisión de Vigilancia del Financiamiento) that will
oversee the implementation of measures to prevent money from drug cartels finding
their way into a candidate’s coffers.
Candidates must disclose all assets and assert under oath that
they have no ties to organized crime. Given that the PRI perfected corruption
in their 70 years in power, to ask one of their politicians to take an “oath”
to stop the flow of money from organized crime would be about as effective as
using a sieve as an umbrella.
The PRI is also insisting that candidates provide proof of having
no criminal record, as well as any information regarding any possible criminal investigations.
All of this information will be made available to authorities, and if there is
convincing evidence that a candidate has connections to organized crime he or
she will be rejected as a candidate.
Game on: Pedro Joaquín Coldwell makes corruption a little harder (Notimex)
However, the party reserves the right to promote a candidate
who might have a questionable reputation or be the subject of gossip in order to
protect candidates from smear campaigns.
To assists candidates, the PRI will be offering training sessions, as well as providing candidates with a financial manual that clarifies
the mandatory measures – all in the hope of making the process more accountable
and transparent.
The PRI also said that these measures were being done in
cooperation with the government bureaucracy: the proposals will be sent to the Federal
Electoral Institute (Instituto Federal Electoral), the Attorney General's
Office (Procuraduría General de la República) and the Special Prosecutor for
Electoral Crimes (Fiscalía Especializada de Atención de Delitos Electorales.)
The document will be voted on next Wednesday. Joaquín Coldwell is encouraging the leaders of
the PRI at the state level, as well as in the Federal District (Mexico City),
to sign the agreement. He also requested that law enforcement authorities,
electoral bodies, and other political parties cooperate and strengthen their
own procedures in order to shield the election from corruption.
At a press conference where he was accompanied by Secretary General of the PRI, Cristina Díaz Salazar, Joaquín Coldwell said that specialized units that operate
with a degree of autonomy are required to prevent corruption, crime and money
laundering, and that this plan follows those “best practices”.
It
is uncertain, however, how effective such a plan would be at combating the historically
corrupt practices of the PRI, who are extremely skilled in this area. The
easiest route around the rule is to use family members – in 1995, for example,
the brother of former president Carlos Salinas, Raul Salinas, was found to have
over $100 million stuffed into various European bank accounts. The president “didn’t
know” about this. His older brother Raul worked as a midlevel civil
servant.
As
it stands, the PRI campaign of presidential candidate Enrique
Peña Nieto was thrown off balance after it was found late last year that
PRI president Humberto Moreira ran
up $3 billion in debt in the not-very-rich state of Coahuila, where he had
been governor. Humberto Moreira was forced to resign.
More recently, late in December the PRI was caught in more
hanky-panky, resulting in the annulment
of the mayoral election in Michoacan, Morelia.
Which is to say, the PRI still has a long, long way to go before
it is truly a “clean” political party.
Twitter: @TimothyEWilson
Email: lapoliticaeslapolitica [at] gmail [dot] com
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