MEXICO CITY : Two Tests for PRI
Two key state elections Sunday will test President Ernesto Zedillo’s commitment to political reform and the durability of his long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Voters will choose new governors in the pivotal central state of Guanajuato and the strategic southern state of Yucatan; Yucatan also will elect a new state legislature and all 106 mayors.
The balloting marks the latest challenge for the PRI, which suffered one of its most crushing defeats in 66 years in power when the opposition National Action Party, or PAN, swept into power in state elections in Jalisco in February. The PRI faces similarly stiff competition from the conservatives in Guanajuato and Yucatan.
Opinion polls show PAN candidate Vicente Fox far ahead of the PRI’s Ignacio Vazquez Torres in the governor’s race in Guanajuato. In Yucatan, what looms as a dead heat pits Victor Cervera Pacheco, standard-bearer for the PRI Old Guard, against the PAN’s Luis Correa Mena. The opposition PAN is already crying fraud.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
