Mexican ruling party leader says federal police needed to secure local elections in 14 states

Mexico ruling party: Federal police for elections

MEXICO CITY — The leader of President Felipe Calderon’s conservative party said Saturday he wants federal police to patrol 14 Mexican states that are holding local elections this year.

National Action Party leader Cesar Nava charged that state governors from the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party are planning to use local police in favor of their candidates.

“Recent history shows us that some PRI governors are preparing to use police to make it easier to round up voters for their party and impede the free movement of our supporters,” Nava said at a gathering of his party’s leadership in Mexico City.

He said such acts suggest “the lack of conditions for free and genuinely democratic elections.”

Nava said he will ask the federal Interior Department — which oversees domestic security — to consider the dispatch of federal forces to the states with elections scheduled. Local police usually provide security for local elections.

Nava’s comments were some of the harshest criticism yet aimed at the old ruling party, known as the PRI. It still holds a majority of Mexican governorships, and other parties have accused the PRI of using vote-buying and other questionable tactics.

PRI leaders have denied the allegations, saying their rivals are frightened by polls showing the PRI leading most state races.

The PRI held Mexico’s presidency without interruption from 1929 to 2000, when it lost the presidential election to the PAN.

The power of the governors of Mexico’s 31 states has grown since the PAN partly dismantled the far-reaching, centralized authority of the presidency that had been built up under the long reign of the PRI.

Ten states are holding elections for governors, mayors and other local posts July 4, and four other states will hold votes for governors or other posts later in the year.

Nava also condemned a series of attacks with small incendiary devices on the offices of PRI, PAN and the third main party, the Democratic Revolution Party, in the northern state of Sinaloa last week. The offices in each case were only slightly damaged and no injuries were reported.

Nava called them “cowardly acts of vandalism” and said some people “are trying to destabilize the pre-electoral climate and spread fear among the population.”