Associated Press
Feb. 16, 2004 12:00 AM
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's electoral council has approved a new set of bylaws for the Green Party, but the Greens will remain suspended for 30 days to iron out remaining wrinkles in their revamped governing practices, officials said.
In September, a court ruled that the internal structure of the country's most influential small party was not democratic enough and ordered the Greens to rewrite their governing rules and choose their leadership anew.
The party presented a new set of bylaws last week at a meeting of the executive council of the Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico City. The country's top electoral council said a few articles of the party's lengthy new governing language violated electoral procedure, but it approved the new measure as a whole.
The party will have a month to bring the articles in question up to code, according to a spokesman for the electoral institute.
After the end of the 30-day period, the Green Party will have six months to chose new leadership in a way that strictly conforms to its new governing procedures.
The Green party helped President Vicente Fox win the 2000 election through an alliance with his right-center National Action Party.
But the Greens broke with National Action and allied with the party Fox knocked from power, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, in midterm elections in July. That alliance helped it secure 17 congressional seats, giving the greens the fourth-largest block in Mexico's 500-seat lower house.
Despite its relative success at the polls, the Green Party has drawn criticism for a centralized authority that is tied to the family of party leader and Sen. Jorge Emilio Gonzalez, son of party founder Jorge Gonzalez.
Some of the sharpest criticism has come from the party's own members, who say they are tired of the Gonzalez family treating the party as a fiefdom.
A dissident Green Party member filed the complaint that prompted last year's court decision.