Mexicans, expecting gifts, risk selling elections to high bidder

The unemployed Mexican chauffeur went shopping at his local Soriana supermarket in the capital last week with gift cards worth 2,300 pesos ($170) he says were given to him by the campaign of incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto.

He said he also received handouts from supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the runner-up, who accused Peña Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, of buying the July 1 election.

"I'll take giveaways wherever I can get them," said Garcia, standing outside one of two Soriana supermarkets in Mexico City that were closed due to safety concerns on July 3 and 4 after throngs of shoppers rushed to spend gift cards supplied by the PRI, according to its opponents.

Like Garcia, poor Mexicans who make up about half of the population have grown to expect gifts come election season. While Lopez Obrador may have a tough time proving that fraud by Peña Nieto's side swung the election, given the 3.3 million-vote margin, the charges illustrate one of the challenges facing Mexico's young democracy, said Andrew Selee at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Twelve years after one-party rule ended, parties have convinced some voters their support should go to the highest bidder, he said.

"Politicians are preying on people's needs in a way that demeans the quality of their vote," said Selee, director of the Washington-based center's Mexico Institute. "It's always a problem when people see their vote as a tool to get concrete benefits and not as a way of setting long-term policy."

Mexico's democracy has strengthened since Peña Nieto's party began opening up electoral politics to competition in the 1990s after ruling alone for six decades, said Duncan Wood, a professor of international relations at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. But the continued buying of votes by the nation's dominant parties undermines that progress, he said.

At the local level, it also raises the specter of drug gangs elevating candidates who are soft on crime, setting back the nation's crackdown on cartels, Selee said.

Lopez Obrador, 58, who lost to Peña Nieto by more than 6 percentage points, has accused the PRI of buying millions of votes using tactics that included giving away bank cards from Monex Grupo Financiero and gift certificates from Organizacion Soriana. He said Thursday that he's filing a legal challenge to invalidate the election results, which he called unconstitutional.

The electoral tribunal, which has final authority over voting results, has until Sept. 6 to decide on the case and announce the president-elect.

The PRI has denied the vote-buying allegations.

Peña Nieto, 45, said Tuesday that his party is being framed.