POLITICS-MEXICO:
Video Scandal Puts Green Party on Defensive

Diego Cevallos


MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - The Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), whose political power is the envy of green parties elsewhere in Latin America, suffered a blow Tuesday to its credibility when a video was publicised showing its leader being tempted with bribes from foreign business executives.

The network giant Televisa and other Mexican media disseminated images of Senator Jorge González, PVEM president, and a hotel chain executive offering him two million dollars to facilitate construction permits for a tourism project in the southeastern resort area of Cancún.

The mayor of the municipality of Benito Juárez, where Cancún is located, is a Green Party member.

But González said Tuesday that the video was a set-up to tarnish his public image. He denied having engaged in any acts of corruption.

He said that in the video he was playing along with the interlocutors "to see how far they would go" and his plan all along was to file a complaint with the city government, which he says he in fact did.

"If I had the intention of accepting (the bribe) I wouldn't have had the bored look that I did... If these men say that they gave me money, well, they gave me nothing but air because I never received anything," he said in a local radio interview.

Despite his explanation, environmental activists were upset with the response of the PVEM. "The behaviour of the Mexican Greens is shameful and infuriating," Homero Aridjis, head of the Mexican ecologist Group of 100, told IPS.

The director of environmental watchdog Greenpeace-Mexico, Alejandro Calvillos, said the party is a disgrace.

The video was made in early December during a meeting involving business executives and then-PVEM activist Santiago León, former lawmaker in the Mexico City legislature.

León was expelled form the party as a result of internal disputes earlier this year, but he waited until now to make the video public "in order to demonstrate the corruption that reigns within that party," he reportedly said.

He also said he would file an influence peddling complaint with the Attorney General's Office against González and his family, who he says have taken over the PVEM. Up until 2001, the party was led by Jorge González Torres, the current party chief's father.

"The true green activists energetically condemn the corruption, influence peddling, embezzlement, systematic lies and tricks with which (the PVEM leadership) has betrayed and defrauded the citizenry," said León.

Mexican environmental activists charge that the PVEM, founder in 1997 of the Federation of Latin American Green Parties, has little knowledge about the issues it claims to defend and that its political operations are based on family interests.

Of the five senators and 17 deputies that the party has in Mexico, none have experience with or hold degrees in environment-related issues, said the activists IPS consulted.

On another front, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) last year fined the Mexican green party for surpassing the legal expenditure limits of private contributions for the 2000 electoral campaign, in which Vicente Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN) and with PVEM support, won the presidency.

The party is currently under investigation for its statutes that, according to reports filed with the IFE, allow its leaders to remain in their posts without the internal democratic processes that are required by law.

After the release of the video implicating González, who at 31 is a senator and party president, counsellor of the IFE Arturo Sánchez said the PVEM will come under new investigations.

If the latest allegations of corruption turn out to be true, sanctions could range from a simple fine to the loss of party status, said the official. And there is still a possibility of criminal charges, he added.

Leaders of various other political parties have expressed indignation about the alleged bribery and have demanded investigation of the matter.

"The PVEM is a party that is not at all environmental. They are only interested in power and money," said Group of 100 leader Aridjis. "I hope this scandal means the death of the green party as we know it today, and that from its ashes emerges a truly environmental green party, because Mexico needs it," he added.

According to Greenpeace's Calvillo, the PVEM does not hold water as an ecological group because it does not promote policies for protecting the environment.

Last year, Juan Behrend, secretary-general of the Greens in the European Parliament, told the weekly magazine Cambio that his group has lost faith in PVEM and has called on the Mexican party to democratise its internal operations.

Sara Castellanos, PVEM senator, defends the party, saying the accusations are part of a campaign that emerged after it broke ties with the Fox government.

In 2001, the PVEM withdrew its political support for the president with the argument that he was not keeping his campaign promises.

The video of González, the hotel executives and an alleged bribe to facilitate construction of a tourist centre in Cancún is a clumsy attempt at a set-up, the PVEM itself said in a communiqué.

Founded in 1986, the PVEM is the fourth leading political force in Mexico, after the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Fox's PAN, and the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).

Although it has never garnered more than five percent of the vote in elections, the party has maintained a presence through alliances at different times with the PRD, PRI and PAN.

The PVEM is the only one among the Latin American green parties that holds even this amount of power. The Brazilian Green Party has been strong in championing environmental causes, but its electoral presence is limited, and the Chilean Green Party, created in 1988, nearly disappeared, but then regrouped and joined the Humanist Party.

There are environmental parties in Uruguay, but they do not have formal political or parliamentary representation, and in Peru and Colombia the green parties have not sought or have failed to achieve electoral recognition.

Green parties simply do not exist in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador or Paraguay.