Mexico held a Congressional election on July 5, to fill all 500 seats. Although not all of the votes have been counted, it appears that the Green Party will have 25 seats in the new Congress, which takes office on September 1.
No party won a majority. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has the most seats, 235. According to this article, it is possible the Greens will cooperate with the PRI to give that party a working majority (235 plus 25 equals 260, which is over half of 500). The National Action Party (PAN), the president’s party, has 153 seats. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has 75 seats. That still leaves 12 seats to be accounted for. Mexico uses Proportional Representation.
Did the greens have any seats before this election?
Actually, only 200 of the 500 seats are decided by proportional representation. The other 300 are elected first-past-the-post by direct constituencies…..
If the Greens do get 25, that will be an increase from their current 17. PRI’s 235 is an increase from their current 106. National Action lost from 206 to 153, and PRD lost from 127 to 75…not counting some of their smaller coalition partners.
The Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico (PVEM) has had seats for some time, often working with the center right government. The Green Party in Mexico is very different from the GPUS. Notably they have taken a stand in support of reinstating the death penalty to combat the bloody drug wars plaguing the country. The GPUS passed a resolution this year reaffirming its opposition to the death penalty in response to the position of the PVEM. European Greens condemned this stance, and threatened to expel the PVEM from the Global Greens as the death penalty is opposed in the Global Green Charter. Many Latin American Green Parties have supported the right of the PVEM to support the death penalty, and opposed the position of the European Greens.
I wonder what other sort of issues the Greens may disagree on.
This might be a reminder of the plus of using PR in the USA…
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner (via pre-election candidate rank order lists) = REAL Democracy.
Everything else is de facto monarchy – oligarchy = the same old EVIL ROT for the last 6,000 plus years.
The U.S.A. continues with its DARK AGE minority rule gerrymanders in the U.S.A. regime and all 50 State regimes (and in many local govt regimes).
Greens who support the death penalty aren’t green, period.
I don’t see the connection between “Green” (meaning pro-environment) and the death penalty.
Most so-called Greens in the US and Europe are really neo-Marxists flying under a flag of convenience. For example: you would think that those who oppose the death penalty would also oppose unprovoked violence, but I’ve never heard of the Greens speaking out against the unprovoked violence their Antifa allies use against rightists, opponents of Islamization and immigration restrictionists.
See:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/05/closer-look-at-pro-koln.html
The Mexican “Green Party”, is actually a nepotistic cult run by one family; first leader was the father of the current leader. Mexico has a long history of small parties that are really just fronts for PRI, and now PAN.
There are several “Green” parties around the world that are really just rightwing conservationist parties.
Mexico has a population of about 110 million with 500 members in its lower house. The US has a population in excess of 300 million with only 435 members in our lower house. Why should the US have such a deficit? Can’t we afford to at least keep up with Mexico? It can’t be to save paper – it’s still one ballot per voter. Besides we don’t pay these members per capita. Maybe our Reps should be paid per capita. Triple the numbers and cut the pay by 2/3rds. Nah! Just keep taking our lickin’ till we stop tickin’.
Good to hear that PAN lost.
“I don’t see the connection between “Green†(meaning pro-environment) and the death penalty. Most so-called Greens in the US and Europe are really neo-Marxists flying under a flag of convenience.”
Eh – not sure where you got your political sciences education, but as far as green groups in Europe go, there’s a few socialist greens in Scandinavia, a few scattered conservative green groups (notable only in one country, minor groups elsewhere), but the rest of the greens is social liberal, certainly not communist.
“There are several “Green†parties around the world that are really just rightwing conservationist parties.”
Name more than three. (Off the top of my head, I can only think of two.)
Mexico will very soon collapse into total mayhem due to drug prohibition, so what does it matter how many seats the greens won?
Nightstallion,
Read the linked article and get a dose of reality.
Another one:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/05/antifa-turns-out-in-force-in-cologne.html
“The first MSM article I encountered about today’s events in Cologne came from the English-language version of Deutsche Welle. Notice its emphasis on the counter-demonstrators rather than the Anti-Islamization Congress itself. You’ll also observe that the opinions of two representative sources of elite opinion — the mayor and a Green Party apparatchik — are given prominence, so that the “anti-fascist†narrative becomes the dominant one delivered to the public.”
“And, judging by the photograph, the Antifas (AFA, Anti-Fascistische Aktion) were prominent in today’s counter-demonstration, just as they were last September:”
(…)
“The groups, which are campaigning against the building of a large new mosque in the city, held a larger rally last September which was joined by members of nationalist parties elsewhere in Europe. That protest sparked violent clashes and rioting by far-left demonstrators.”
The premier Green party in the world(the Germans) are in bed with the violent leftist thugs of the antifa.
They are neo-Marxist: meaning they aren’t dumb enough to say they want to recreate the Soviet Empire or something similar. Their main goal seems to be to destroy what remains of the traditional social order and replace it with a less odious form of egalitarian paradise than the ones created by Lenin and Stalin.
Greens are NOT social liberals.
Social liberal means in between conservatives and social democrats but leaning more towards the social democrats. Like the Dutch D66 or the UK Liberal Democrats up until recently.
Most left-wing Green parties are to the left of social democrats. Petra Kelly was an admirer of Rosa Luxemburg. Joschka Fischer was a self-declared Marxist at one point, he never went on record whether he still was or not when he was in government. It’s unlikely though that he moved to the right of the SPD.
Of course, there are some conservative Green parties: Besides Mexico there’s the Czech Republic, the Republic of Georgia, and Latvia (who had the world’s first Green Prime Minister). Also, Generation Ecology led by John Kerry’s cousin in France.
I’ve never heard of any social liberal Green parties though.
Mexico uses Proportional Representation.
This is a common misconception. Only 200 of the 500 seats are awarded by proportional representation. The other 300 are single-seat plurality. Thus the electoral system as a whole is predominantly majoritarian. See Matthew Shugart’s series on Mexico, especially this post.
On whether some Greens are socialists: all political labels get stretched and bent out of shape. But the Green (used to be called radical) and socialist traditions each has a core set of premises. I like to encapsulate them this way: socialists see the world through the eyes of a radicalized wage worker, radicals see the world through the eyes of a radicalized shopkeeper, artisan or self-employed professional. Environmental issues resonate with modern-day radical parties (mostly called Green Parties) because so many of the widely advocated solutions to environmental problems involve replacing large scale production with small scale production and corporate ownership with individual proprietors and face-to-face partnerships.
Many adherents of the world’s Green parties don’t fit my definition of a radical very well — and many adherents of the world’s socialist parties don’t fit my definition of a socialist very well either. That doesn’t make the definitions wrong, although they could certainly be wrong, or at least too limited, for many other reasons. It does the reflect the fact that I started with. Political labels are like poorly fitted clothing. They cover your body but aren’t really very comfortable.