Milenio on Sunday had an excellent article on the Mexican Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, PVEM), a party that even among other opportunistic parties truly stand out.
There are several small parties in Mexico - Convergencia, PANAL, PT, etc - that are characterized by very little if any ideology at all, but with a stunning level of opportunism and lack of principles, yet even compared with this ilk, the Green Party is truly something special: It is not only the world's only rightwing "environmentalist" party - one of its main issues has been to reintroduce the death penalty in Mexico - but also because the party has shown pretty much a complete disregard even for environmental issues: The European Federation of Green Parties as a result denied recognizing the PVEM as a green party.
One may also recall the "niño verde" scandal of 2004, when Jorge Emilio González Martínez, son of party founder Emilio González Torres - the party is essentially a family enterprise - was caught on tape apparently negotiating bribes where land grants would be given to beach developers in protected zones, in return for cash.
Nor does the party support any of the social liberal issues of other post-materialist green parties: In Mexico City, the party did not vote in favor of the law that legalized gay unions; in Guadalajara, moreover, its candidate for mayor in 2009, Gamaliel Ramírez, was fined by the state's electoral institute for anti-gay slurs against a gay opponent.
In any case: The Milenio article does a great job of detailing the lack of any political convictions of this party. Mexico's democracy would be far better off without this party.
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