Big Victory by Mexico’s Ruling Party Confirmed

Official results Monday showed that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party won an overwhelming majority of seats in the new Congress in Mexico’s recent election, which sparked charges of vote fraud and protests in several border cities.

The Federal Electoral Commission said the almost completed vote count showed the ruling party, known as PRI, so far winning 230 of the 300 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The opposition has won just four seats, the commission said.

Results of the races for the other 66 seats contested in the July 7 election will be released within a day. An additional 100 chamber seats will be distributed later to opposition parties based on their percentage of the vote.

The major opposition party, the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, won three congressional districts, and the leftist Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution won the fourth opposition seat, officials said.

The PRI has traditionally held huge majorities in the Congress. The party has never lost a presidential or governor’s race since it was formed in 1929 by leaders of the Mexican revolution.

Proportionately, the opposition won its largest number of seats in 1955, when the National Action Party won six seats in a 161-member chamber.

No results have been released for the seven gubernatorial races, including two in the northern border states of Nuevo Leon and Sonora, where the National Action Party was strongest. The ruling PRI claimed it won all seven seats, but National Action has said it won Sonora.

The results have been greeted calmly throughout most of Mexico. But sporadic protests have broken out in cities along the U.S. border, where the opposition parties are strongest.

About 20,000 demonstrators marched Sunday night through the downtown streets of Ciudad Juarez, in the state of Chihuahua, to protest alleged electoral fraud by the ruling party. It has denied the allegations.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Francisco Barrio, his wife and family and National Action Party congressional candidates Monday were in the fourth day of a hunger strike, camping in the downtown plaza.

Over the weekend, angry party members effectively closed the border between eastern Sonora and southeastern Arizona to protest the alleged vote fraud.

In the hotly contested Sonoran capital of Hermosillo, 2,000 protesters set up tents late Sunday and promised to camp in the central plaza until officials declared victory for their candidate for governor, Adalberto Rosas Lopez.

“Our state has been assaulted by electoral officials who without shame would kill the people’s will by imposing a government,” Rosas told demonstrators.