Mexico's Green Party: Pro-Death Penalty, Allegedly Corrupt - and Not Very Green Jo Tuckman - The Guardian
go to original April 22, 2015

A Green party billboard promoting the restoration of the death penalty. (Randal Sheppard)

In much of the world, green politicians struggle to shake off the impression that they are impossible dreamers whose lofty principles would be unlikely to survive the grubby and cynical world of politics.

This has never been a problem in Mexico: leaders of the country’s Green party have regularly been accused of corruption, selling political favors – and of showing no interest in environmental issues. In 2009, the party ran an election campaign calling for the return of the death penalty.

Now the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico faces record 180m peso (£7.9m/$11.7m) fines for breaching electoral campaign rules amid growing anger over its tactics ahead of midterm elections in June. More than 96,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that electoral authorities withdraw the party’s registration after it flooded the country with political advertising before the campaign period officially began.

“These false greens have caused major damage to the party political system, the electoral authorities and democracy,” wrote political analyst Jorge Alcocer in a widely shared recent column.

Alcocer accused the party – often seen as a vehicle for the family of its founder Jorge González Torres – of putting its political clout at the service of powerful commercial interests, such as the country’s TV networks.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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