Baja Elections See Maverick Party’s Control at Stake

Although final results remained uncertain in close races Monday, the vote in Baja California’s weekend elections could pose a new challenge to Gov. Ernesto Ruffo Appel and his maverick party’s control of the state congress.

If the partial results in key state legislative races hold, the nationally dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) could move toward gaining control of the state congress from Ruffo’s National Action Party (PAN), which dominates Baja but is a minority opposition party in most other Mexican states.

Ruffo became Mexico’s first PAN governor in 1989, the first opposition party governor in modern Mexican history.

Ruffo’s party apparently retained the leadership of major cities Tijuana and Ensenada, and was leading in the border city of Tecate, according to figures released Monday with about 80% of the vote counted.

But the PRI appeared to have won a Mexicali legislative seat from the PAN, gaining a seventh seat overall, officials said. If the PRI prevails in the final count, the party could win control of the 19-seat legislature by combining its votes with four seats held by minority party representatives, three of whom generally vote with the PRI. The PAN has had a slim majority in the state congress.

Final vote results are expected by today.

A newly strengthened PRI could create a confrontational tone for the second half of Ruffo’s six-year term and impede some of the governor’s programs, political observers said. It would also increase the importance of the congress’ four minority seats, with the PRI and PAN vying for their swing votes.

“If the PRI wins, that will complicate matters,” said Tonatiuh Guillen Lopez, a political scientist at the College of the Northern Border. “Many fundamental issues have depended on the PAN’s control of the congress.”

On Monday, PRI officials disputed the vote count and claimed misconduct by Ruffo’s rival party. PRI activists said they would file a formal challenge to election results in most of the legislative races, which officials said could delay the release of an official vote count. Among other things, the PRI charged that 1,500 votes were improperly annulled in a PRI-dominated precinct, and that a voter registration list was inflated in a pro-PAN district.

“From the beginning, we felt the credentialing wasn’t objective,” said PRI spokeswoman Mariana Pria. “Throughout the day the police were detaining our people.”

Twelve campaign workers arrested by the police for improper conduct belonged to the PRI, she said.

A PAN official said the PRI’s complaints were exaggerated.

“The irregularities that existed would not have changed anything,” said Jose Leon Ramos of the PAN municipal committee in Tijuana. “It’s like baseball. You have to go with the decision of the umpire, and the umpire is the people.”

In spite of the dispute, independent observers of Sunday’s elections reported high voter turnout and generally clean and calm elections, the first ever run by a PAN-dominated government. Voter turnout was 85% in Tijuana, officials said.

One of the main initiatives that could be affected by a loss of PAN power is Ruffo’s plan to further reform and modernize the state electoral system, including a proposed independent electoral commission that has been rejected once by the legislature.

Ruffo has already overseen the shift of powers over voter registration lists from federal to state officials and the introduction of a high-tech, anti-fraud voter identification card that made its debut Sunday--the first such photo credential to be used in Mexico.

The state administration’s performance Sunday received high marks from nonpartisan human rights organizations in Mexico City and Baja California that scrutinized the elections. Other than scattered irregularities and arrests of campaign workers for allegedly interfering at polling places, they described the elections as clean.

“The elections were tranquil and peaceful,” said Sergio Aguayo, president of the Mexican Academy of Human Rights. “The irregularities that were reported were few and not very serious.”

The voters sent mixed signals, analysts said. The vote results indicated PAN’s popularity endures in this relatively prosperous and politically independent border state, where the PRI is resented as a symbol of corruption and control by outsiders in Mexico City.

But analysts said the closeness of some races showed some voters have become disenchanted with the PAN administration, both at the state and municipal level, a natural product of high expectations generated by the coming to power of the longtime opposition in a state where the government is struggling to keep up with the demands of surging population.

“What is becoming more important is the disenchantment,” Guillen said. “Whatever it does, the PAN faces a social problem where there is always a population that remains without services.”