[Gral. Stamelin]

As you know, I'm Mexican, and you probably have noticed that my country occupies the first place in the resources given to the political parties to their campaign's procelitism.
For example, in the elections of one of our republic's states, (Estado de México), the political procelitism costed more than the whole Republican Party of USA in the federal elections, when president Bush was the winner.
It is a very serious problem, considering that in those elections, there were only 5 political parties in the match, and for the Federal Congress elections of this July 6th, there are 11 political parties, with exactly the same basic resources, and adding the private sector contributions.
Of these 11 parties, only 2 have allied.
This is a cancer to our society, and the fact is that it's a great business to create a political party in my country, cause if you don't win, you don't lose anything, and you win millions of dollars.
Just for the files, the political parties in the present match for the Federal Congress elections are the following:

1.-PRI/PVM.=(the good all time centralists) Institutional Revolution Party / Mexican Green Ecologyst Party.
2.-PAN.= (party of the millionaires) National Action Party.
3.-PRD.= (the bolchevic) Democratic Revolution Party.
4.-PT.= (the menchevic) Workers Party.
5.-PAS.= (the semi-trudovic) Social Action Party.
6.-PSN.= (the nationalists) Nationalistic Society Party.
7.-PLM.= (the anti-church) Liberal Mexican Party.
8.- PMP.= (the balsfemous friends of dope SOB's) Possible Mexico Party.
9.- PFC.= (the duh) Citizen Force Party.
10.- PC.= (the uh?) COnvergence Party.

But you know, besides the three first parties, that are the most powerful ones, only the PVM and the PT are actual potence, and maybe the PSN is a good ideology, but the rest are real crap.
I propose to leave only three poltical parties: PRD, PRI and PAN, which, respectively, represent the leftists, the middies and the archirightists.
This would save a lot of guacamole.

[Paco]

I must agree with you in the point that the multiple parties in our country is a blatant waste of money, it's obvious that the suddend apparition of some parties is an attempt of dividing votes, but I can argue with you about the description you made about the PRI/PVEM alliance...
Good old time centralists.. maybe you should focus your comment in what is wrong (the recent abundance of parties) and leave to another topic your political preferences.. that's naturally my opinion..

[Gral. Stamelin]

You are right on the comment about focusing my topic in the abundance of parties, but you must know I'm not a centralist, and the adejctive of "good old time", is just an I don't know where regional expression.
But, thank you very much, I appreciate your comments.

[Proctor]

I don't know about you, but I'd personally much rather have a selection of parties to vote for than two, or in this case three.

But now I think about it, if you are using an electoral system of First Past the Post (which I have no idea whether you are or not, I'm no expert on Mexican politics ), then it's almost a waste of time; the small parties won't win any seats even if they get a large base of support.

Then again, maybe I've missed the whole point. What is the deal with all the money involved?

[Gral. Stamelin]

Well, my friend:

The "deal with all the money involved", is that in a country, just as ours, that has many economical problems, spending 460 million dollars, per each political party is a fall of respect for the Mexican poor people. (Nowadays, from 90 million aprox. total population, 40 million live in EXTREME poberty.)
It's a terrible situation, and you know, with all the dawn publicity and hundreds of candidates, people no longer care about the candidates, but only the few ideas of the partie's publicity, and most of the people, feel fed up with democracy. (In the July 6th elections, the abstentionism in Mexico City was of 56% of the potential votants.)
Democratic crisis such as this one, are often ended in a dictatorship.

[Proctor]

I still don't understand. Is there a state subsidy for political parties or something? If so, I wholeheartedly agree.

[Paco]

I still don't understand. Is there a state subsidy for political parties or something? If so, I wholeheartedly agree.

Yep, that's the point, the goverment must pay a big (and I mean, big) amount to the parties... Most of it is wasted and its robbed by their leaders.

[KingofKhaos]

Regarding Mexico's legislative election, it was such a waste of money for such a pityful result. These were the costliest elections EVER in any part of the world. And all that money went down the drain.

Mexico had a 60% overall abstention rate. Even if the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) "won" more Congresional seats, it had close to 10% less votes compared with the 2000 Federal Election. The leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) got 17% of the vote, and lost close to 4 million votes compared to the 1997 Federal Election.

And the conservative National Action Party was the biggest loser of them all. After electing Vicente Fox as the first non-PRI Mexican President after 71 years of one party rule, he somehow managed to dilute his historic mandate. It's not that the PRI won, it's mostly that the PAN lost. They all lost.

And it was all due to the worst kind of politics. Mexican-style.

[Gral. Stamelin]

I really think the fact that the PAN lost, is a victory for Mexico.

[Proctor]

Man, that sucks real bad. If you ask me though, the answer isn't to limit the amount of parties, but just to stop funding them. Maybe even put a cap on how much can be spent in a campaign.

[Paco]

There IS a cap for parties for wasting, say, using the money, but more often that not, they are just ignored and private funds are used