Mexico Ruling Party Chief, Under Fire From Members, Steps Down

The ruling party’s top official resigned his post Friday under fire from party members for ineptitude and a steady loss of elections.

The resignation and a series of recent party defections are the latest in a string of setbacks for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled Mexico since 1929.

Santiago Onate resigned as president of the party’s National Executive Committee, according to a brief statement by the government news agency Notimex. Party authorities will meet in the next few days to elect a successor.

Shortly after taking office, President Ernesto Zedillo appointed Onate and gave him the task of trying to heal a rift among at least three feuding factions.

But since then, several government officials have defected from the PRI, as the party is known, and Onate’s resignation is widely believed to be penance for the PRI’s faltering image.

Since its founding, the PRI has maintained national power through patronage, strong-arm tactics and even electoral fraud. The party has not lost a presidential election since its inception. But democratic reforms and dissatisfaction with an economic crisis have eroded its power at the ballot box.