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The Green Ecological Party of Mexico (Spanish: Partido Verde Ecologista de México, known by the abbreviation PVEM) is one of the six political parties to enjoy representation in the Mexican Congress. The party's congressional strength currently stands at 17 deputies (from 500) and five senators (from 128).
In the general election of 2000 it allied itself with the National Action Party (PAN) to create the "Alliance for Change" (Alianza por el Cambio). It was this PAN/PVEM alliance that carried Vicente Fox Quesada to his presidential victory.
The alliance broke down one year into Fox's administration and, in the July 2003 mid-term elections and various other local elections held since 2000 (in particular, the governatorial races in the important states of México and Nuevo León), the PVEM has allied itself more frequently with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Over the same period the parties support has dwindled amidst accusations of corruption, nepotism, and breaches of Mexican electoral law. Since securing its registration as a political party on 9 February 1991, it has been run by a single family: its first president was Jorge González Torres (a civil servant who formerly belonged to the PRI), who was succeeded by his son, Jorge Emilio González Martínez (currently a senator and nicknamed El Niño Verde, or "Greenboy"). On 3 September 2003 Mexico's top electoral court ruled that its statutes were in violation of the Constitution in that they allowed a restricted inner circle of members to select all the party's candidates and officials. Shortly after, on 10 October 2003, the Federal Electoral Institute imposed a multi-million dollar fine on the PVEM for campaign finance offenses during the 2000 presidential race.
A further scandal engulfed the party in the last week of February 2004 when a video was released in which Jorge Emilio González Martínez was recorded being offered – and, while his reaction is open to interpretation, certainly not vociferously rejecting – a bribe in the amount of USD $2 million. According to the video, the funds were being made available by two foulmouthed businessmen in exchange for his assistance in facilitating land use permits for a real estate development near the Caribbean resort of Cancún. (The municipality of Benito Juárez, in which Cancún is located, is currently governed by a PVEM mayor.)
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