MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's ruling party was reeling Monday as early election results showed it losing several key cities in state elections that reflected deep voter anger over the country's economic crisis and a series of government corruption scandals.
The results provided further evidence
that the Institutional Revolutionary Party's decades-old monolithic clamp
on power was eroding and that it may be prepared to accept a greater degree
of political pluralism in what for years has been a virtual single-party
state.
Sunday's voting in three states was
seen as an important bellwether before July's midterm elections for the
federal Congress and the first-ever direct election of the mayor of Mexico
City.
Analysts said President Ernesto Zedillo's
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, risks losing its majority in
the lower house for the first time and City Hall in the capital if current
trends continue.
"It is a proxy for how people
are feeling,'' said Luis Rubio, a political scientist at Mexico City's
Center of Research for Development.
The elections were for town halls in
122 municipalities in Mexico state, which is adjacent to the capital city.
Voters also went to the polls in 85 municipal elections in the state of
Hidalgo, north of Mexico City, and in 38 local races in Coahuila state,
on the U.S. border.
With 78 percent of the vote counted,
the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, appeared to have lost three
of Mexico state's biggest towns. The conservative Party of National Action
(PAN) was leading in the city of Naucalpan, while the left-leaning Party
of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was ahead in Texcoco and Nezahualcoyotl,
a vast urban slum that is adjacent to Mexico City.
Those municipalities together represent
well over 6 million votes.
"People have showed that they
are tired of the PRI and the already high probability that they will lose
their majority in (congressional elections) in 1997 has been reinforced,''
PAN leader Felipe Calderon Hinojosa said on hearing the results.
PRD president Manuel Lopez Obrador
was ebullient about what seems to be a comeback for his party, which lost
momentum after its poor showing in the 1994 presidential race. He predicted
the PRD will win 30 of Mexico state's 122 municipalities when all votes
are counted.
"Despite fraudulent operations,
the PRD has turned it around,'' he said. "If we can win Nezahualcoyotl,
we have hope for winning Mexico City next year.''
Mexico's prominent election observer
organization, known as Civic Alliance, reported polling irregularities
but would not say whether they affected the outcome.
According to preliminary results, the
PAN appeared to have won Coahuila's big cities of Torreon and Saltillo.
The PRI still is expected to be the
biggest winner of Sunday's races. But losing major cities, traditionally
held by the PRI, is a sign the party's stranglehold is loosening. The PRI
has held the presidency, federal Congress, indeed most all elected offices,
for nearly seven decades.
But in recent years, Mexico has endured
a deep economic recession created by a botched devaluation of the peso
in December 1994.
The economic crisis cost as many as
2 million people their jobs. Mexico has recovered only about 800,000 jobs
since then, and inflation continues at a high 26 percent.
In an expression of violent discontent,
a new guerrilla movement, known as the Popular Revolutionary Army, launched
a bloody offensive in three southern Mexican states last August. Sporadic
fighting continues.
The guerrilla group follows the 1994
emergence of anti-government guerrillas known as Zapatistas in the southern
state of Chiapas.
Most Mexicans are fed up with corruption
in the PRI-led government, exposed in recent years by scandals that have
linked top officials to drug trafficking, money laundering and assassinations.
Voters at polling stations told reporters
the PRI has stolen government funds and made a mess of the economy.
"Beyond the economic crisis is
the issue of credulity,'' Rubio said. "People don't believe anything
the government says.''
Last change: Nov. 12, 1996