PAN Winning in Central Mexico Governor’s Vote

An outspoken opposition leader appeared headed for a landslide victory in the central state of Guanajuato as voters in two states chose governors Sunday in elections that reflected anger with the government over an economic crisis that has slashed the value of the peso nearly in half since December.

Businessman Vicente Fox was winning with 62% of the vote, with 13% of precincts reporting. Exit poll results both by a combined team from the University of Guanajuato and the University of Guadalajara in a neighboring state as well as by three respected newspapers all showed Fox with more than 50% of the vote. Only the ruling party poll showed its candidate leading.

“The vote of punishment” was expected to be a major factor favoring opposition gubernatorial candidates both in the southern state of Yucatan and in Guanajuato, a state that many Mexicans have left to work in the United States.

In Yucatan, the leadership of Fox’s National Action Party, or PAN, said their gubernatorial candidate, Luis Correa Mena, was narrowly leading but that the election was too close to call. They announced that with 22% of the precincts counted, Correa had 49% of the vote to the ruling party’s 48%.

But partial official returns reported by the state news agency, Notimex, showed the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party with 49.9% to the PAN’s 43.8%.

Opposition victories Sunday could be a warning to President Ernesto Zedillo of how greater democracy and growing dissatisfaction with his administration’s economic policies could converge to break the stranglehold on power of his PRI, which has ruled Mexico for 66 years. “If the elections had been the first of December, the PRI might have won,” said Jorge Hidalgo, a Guanajuato member of Alianza Civica, a national citizens group that monitors elections. “But not now.”

In Guanajuato--the state that voted most heavily for Zedillo in August and that the PRI nearly swept in December’s local elections--a Fox victory is expected to launch his bid to be Mexico’s first opposition party president in seven decades.

As governor, Fox is expected to become a major thorn in Zedillo’s side by leading a drive for states’ rights in this traditionally centralized nation.

Analysts say that much of the 52-year-old Fox’s appeal to voters is that he expresses their fury at government mismanagement that led to the economic crisis and at the unpopular measures that followed it.

“I am committed to governing for the whole state,” Fox said in declaring victory. “Every democratic triumph proves that the people of Mexico have moved further away from presidentialism and toward true democracy.”

Leoncio Gonzalez, a 19-year-old here in Dolores Hidalgo, the birthplace of Mexican independence, said he voted for Fox’s PAN because “I think his proposals for solving our problems are better.”

In marked contrast to Fox, the PRI’s gubernatorial candidate in Yucatan is Victor Cervera Pacheco, a 59-year-old hard-liner who served all six years in the Cabinet of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, whom most Mexicans blame for the financial crisis. He faced the PAN’s CorreaMena, a 35-year-old opposition reformer.

“People want a change,” car-rental agent Jose Antonio said in Merida. “We need a change.”

In Yucatan, the PAN appeared almost certain to keep City Hall and the state capital, Merida, where it was leading by a 2-1 margin. But a series of quick counts were delayed after an election day in which scores of election violations were reported throughout the state.

In rural areas, voters are cautious about openly expressing their desire to punish the government. In the farming village of Las Casitas, in the Sierra Madre range--one of the poorest areas of Guanajuato--armed police watched as voters entered the schoolhouse to vote.

“There is a mixture of anger and fear,” said one man, one of the few who would speak and then only on the condition he not be identified. “Who knows how it will turn out.”

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Many voters in Guanajuato appeared to have decided to express their anger by staying home to watch the national soccer championship semifinals rather than going to the polls. Voter turnout in the state was low, with only about 45% of registered voters casting ballots, according to the university survey.

In Yucatan, more than 60% of the registered voters cast ballots, according to Ana Rosa Payan, state chairwoman of the PAN and mayor of Merida.

“Abstention reflects the economic situation that most of the country is living through,” said Domingo Velazquez, a 32-year-old teacher in Dolores Hidalgo.

At the precinct where Velazquez was a polling official, fewer than 160 of the 506 registered voters had cast ballots by midafternoon. “People suspect that the devaluation [of the peso] was postponed until after the local elections in December, and they feel as if they were tricked,” he said.

Nevertheless, he said he continues to believe in the power of the vote, even though his mayoral candidate lost in the PRI sweep in December. “Competition between the parties has improved local services,” he said.

Still, the message of democracy has not reached all political activists in the two states. Observer groups in both places reported minor election law violations. One polling place in Yucatan reported its ballot boxes stolen.

“There’s a lot of tension here” between the PRI and PAN, opposition poll watcher Perpetua Elide Pech de Chan said in the village of Kini, accusing local PRI bosses of threatening to take away voters’ monthly food subsidies if they voted for the opposition.

Besides the threats, there were the promises.

A garbage dump that is home to thousands of squatters in the Yucatan port town of Progreso was fertile ground for the ruling party. Few there spoke of democracy. Rather, most said they would vote PRI out of tradition--and fear that the PAN would drive them from the fetid swamp where the ruling party allows them to remain.

Darling reported from Dolores Hidalgo and Fineman from Mexico City. Special correspondent Trina Kleist in Merida contributed to this report.