Mexico City---With huge campaign billboards touting its support for life sentences against kidnappers, Mexico's controversial Green Party is racking up supporters as fast as fines ahead of weekend elections.
The party has come under fire from the left and the right alike while aligning itself with President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which opened the oil industry to private investors -- not your usual green policy.
Election authorities have imposed $33 million in fines on the Green Party for breaking campaign rules ahead of Sunday's midterm elections, in which Mexicans will pick 500 congressmen, nearly 900 mayors and nine governors.
It has placed ads in movie theaters and television to boast about its support for a ban on circus animals and for raising fines against polluters.
But the coalition of European Green parties has stopped recognizing their Mexican counterpart as one of their own.
Mexico's Greens support fracking, a form of drilling for shale gas by blasting through layers of rock with a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals that environmentalists oppose.
The party has even been fined for using non-recyclable paper for campaign pamphlets.
Despite the financial penalties and controversies, opinion polls predict a respectable eight to 11 percent of the vote for Mexico's fourth biggest party.
- Getting closer to voters -
The self-described centrist party sparked controversy already in 2009 when it hired popular television presenters to call for the death penalty against murderers and kidnappers.
This year, it was fined millions for exceeding campaign ad limits and for using banned get-out-the-vote tactics such as offering discounts at stores to voters.
But the Greens, with $29 million in public funds at its disposal this year, have not been deterred.
"I couldn't understand a party that doesn't use all the tools available to get closer to the citizens in a more direct way," congressman Arturo Escobar, the party's national spokesman, told AFP.
"We are a party that has maintained its direction despite the fines. We have overcome the negative campaign," Escobar said, predicting a "historic" election for the Greens.
The leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the conservative National Action Party (PAN) have lodged complaints against the Greens at the National Electoral Institute.
The institute rejected a bid by the rivals to have the Greens' registration as a party annulled.
AFP
