Hobbling Mexico’s Democracy

Editorial

It is natural, and welcome, for any democracy to reform its rules and procedures to guarantee the legitimacy and fairness of its elections. But Mexico’s political parties are playing with fire, using the cover of reform to try to oust the board of the autonomous Federal Electoral Institute, including its president, Luis Carlos Ugalde.

The arbiter of Mexico’s elections, the electoral institute has conferred legitimacy to a process badly tattered by decades of widespread election fraud and de facto single-party rule.

It proved its full worth last year when it had the credibility to pull the nation through an extremely bitter presidential election in which Felipe Calderón, of the National Action Party, won by a margin of half a percent, and the loser, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party, cried fraud and took his supporters to the streets.

The electoral institute made mistakes along the way. It wasn’t sufficiently forceful to stop illegal campaign advertising by business groups. An election tribunal, however, determined that these irregularities did not alter the outcome of the election.

The two losing parties — Mr. López Obrador’s party, and to a lesser extent the once all-powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI — now want Mr. Ugalde and his team out. Not surprising, perhaps, but also not the way the democratic game is supposed to be played.

President Calderón and his party are reportedly going along because they want to get beyond the mess of last year’s elections, and Mr. Calderón needs PRI support for his plans for fiscal reform.

Getting rid of the institute’s board members before the end of their term in 2010 would make a mockery of the autonomy that was meant to protect the institute — and Mexico’s electoral system — from the vagaries of Mexico’s politics. It would also open the door for the loser of the next election to try the same gambit again.

Mexico could do with a healthy discussion about what went wrong in last year’s elections and how to ensure mistakes aren’t repeated. But firing the electoral institute’s counselors would only undermine an institution that has proved indispensable for Mexico’s young and fragile democracy.