Mexico City Denies Sending Supplies to Buy Votes for PRI

(Mexico, AN 20 January) Yesterday it was reported that a trailer showed up in Guerrero, containing 40 tons of welfare supplies (food stuffs and basic staples) from the State of Mexico’s Department of Social Services (called “DIF”). The materials were offloaded into a house operated by Panal, one of the political parties supporting the candidacy of Manuel Añorve. The PRD investigated, suspecting that the supplies had been diverted to Guerrero to help Añorve buy or suppress votes. Today, the DIF in the State of Mexico denied any involvement in the shipment of basic supplies to Chilpancingo or elsewhere. The director of the DIF in Mexico, Adriana Rico García, said that the agency “does not handle basic food boxes and supplies such as those exhibited by the PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition as having been handed out in Guerrero for purposes of the election.” She said that since last year they have handed out a different sort of food and supply supplement called the “Bicentennial Food Basket,” which is distributed by the supplier to the 125 municipalities of the state. There is no program called “Nutrition on the Move,” as alleged. The contents of the two different packages are considerably different, she said. For that reason, she called upon the appropriate authorities to see who was responsible for the incident; speaking for the DIF of the State of Mexico, she had no reluctance to cooperate with the investigation.