Mexico’s Ruling Party Elects New Leader

Humberto Roque Villanueva was elected Sunday as the leader of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and pledged that the fractured party will rally behind President Ernesto Zedillo.

“We PRI members have expressed unconditionally our support for our country’s president because we recognize in him a man honestly committed to the job of transforming the country, to rescuing it from the most serious crisis in decades,” Roque Villanueva said in his acceptance speech at PRI headquarters here.

The massive downtown headquarters was overwhelmed by thousands of flag-waving party faithful, many of whom came by bus to the capital from outlying towns for Roque Villanueva’s official election by the PRI’s National Executive Committee.

Almost every sentence of Roque Villanueva’s speech was applauded. But he made no direct reference to his biggest challenge--to hang on to the party’s congressional majority in midterm elections next summer, which threaten to loosen the PRI’s 67-year grip on power.

In comments to reporters Saturday, Roque Villanueva said: “We have to get it across to the whole country that not only are we alive . . . but that we are prepared to face the risks of elections.”

The PRI has suffered a series of problems lately. These include state and town hall election defeats, defections to the opposition and party infighting.

Mexico is also struggling to emerge from its worst recession in decades, which was sparked by a bungled currency devaluation in December 1994.

Roque, until this week the PRI’s leader of the lower house of Congress, was the sole candidate for the PRI presidency after the resignation Friday of Santiago Onate.

Onate, who stepped down after 16 months as the party’s president, said in his resignation letter that the time had come for new leadership. Critics say he was a scapegoat for the PRI’s failings.

A self-confessed Zedillista (follower of the president) and “political animal,” the 53-year-old Roque Villanueva is known as a skillful negotiator.

His academic background is in economics, making him more akin to Zedillo’s technocrat-filled Cabinet than Onate, who was more a traditional career politician.

Roque Villanueva cemented his friendship with Zedillo when the two worked closely together in the administration of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Roque Villanueva was chairman of Congress’ Planning and Budget Committee when Zedillo was deputy minister of that branch of the Finance Ministry.