Mexico Troops Rout Dissidents in 7 City Halls : Election dispute: The opposition in Michoacan state accuses the ruling party of fraud.

Armored vehicles rolled into Michoacan state as opposition supporters were ousted Thursday from city halls they had shut down in December to dramatize election fraud charges against Mexico’s ruling party.

By midday there were reports that demonstrators from the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) had been dislodged from seven of the 17 city halls closed since the disputed elections.

The government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari ordered the troop movement after appeals from the governor of Michoacan for help in ending the occupation.

“In response to the request of the government and Congress, the presence of federal forces in the state (of Michoacan) was reinforced beginning today (Thursday),” the country’s interior minister, Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, said in a statement.

Morning television news programs Thursday showed videotape of armored vehicles rolling through the streets of the state capital of Morelia, 150 miles northwest of Mexico City.

A state spokesman said military police had removed demonstrators, some of whom were armed, from seven city halls and were on their way to an eighth by mid-afternoon.

The spokesman, who demanded anonymity, said 20 people were arrested.

“There was no incident of bloodshed,” he said in a telephone interview from Morelia.

The official news agency Notimex said PRD sympathizers were ousted at city halls in Apatzingan, Ciudad Hidalgo, Brisenas, Chavinda, Huandacareo, Cotija and Jacona at midday Thursday.

On Thursday, the PRD issued a statement warning there could be a “bloodbath” in Michoacan.

A party spokesman said the situation has deteriorated because the party leadership had lost control of dissident groups in several towns, including Apatzingan.

“The people in Apatzingan are simply more radical than the others. They’re not answering PRD calls to follow the party line.” spokesman Ricardo Pascoe said.

Armored vehicles entered the state on Wednesday, according to witnesses and news reports. Five armored vehicles began patrolling Ciudad Hidalgo, 110 miles northwest of Mexico City, on Wednesday, said Hector Edmundo Tinajero Gonzales, editor of the local newspaper, El Clarion.

The PRI invariably denies election fraud allegations and often makes countercharges of violence against the opposition, especially the leftist PRD.

The PRD says the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI, which has ruled Mexico 61 years, cheated it out of victory in the December elections in Michoacan.

The state has been a problem for the PRI since the 1988 presidential race, when native son and PRD founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas came in second to Salinas in an election clouded by charges of vote fraud.

Nearly half of Michoacan’s 110 city halls were occupied by Cardenas supporters after the national elections to protest alleged vote fraud and demand the replacement of the PRI governor.

In one of his first officials acts after taking office in December, 1988, Salinas replaced the governor. The move failed to pacify the PRD.