Mexico's small, oft-questioned Green Party to become the second-largest force in Congress

livemint.com:

incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum and making strategic alliances regardless of political ideology than for taking on environmental causes. But it has always been a strange political group in Mexico. Founded by the millionaire owner of a discount pharmacies chain, the Green party has at various times called for re-instating the death penalty, mandatory English classes for school kids and life prison sentences for kidnappers.

What it is good at is handing out free campaign swag — backpacks, T-shirts and water bottles with its logo “PVEM", for Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico — and getting influencers and celebrities to post videos supporting it, allegedly in exchange for payments. The party has allied itself with whoever it thinks will win. It was an ally of the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, of the conservative National Action Party, and now cleaves to the ruling Morena party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

That has worked for them, because Mexico's arcane election laws allow coalition parties to distribute votes, congressional seats and state governorships among themselves. That means the Greens, which have almost never functioned as a real opposition, will likely displace the National Action party as the main opposition party in Congress in September. Though the Green Party won far fewer actual votes in the June 2 elections than National Action, it will have more seats in Congress because of ‘proportional representation’ rules designed to favor smaller parties.