Labastida Wins Mexico’s Historic Ruling-Party Vote

Millions of Mexicans cast votes Sunday in a presidential primary that marked a make-or-break experiment in democracy for the country’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. The overwhelming winner was veteran politician Francisco Labastida.

Militants within the party, known as the PRI, hope the election will give the world’s longest-governing party the credibility to extend its 70-year rule into the 21st century.

Many had worried that the primary could result in a disastrous split in the party. But Sunday night, Labastida’s top challenger, Roberto Madrazo, said he would remain in the party even though he was clearly losing.

“There was always an official candidate,” Madrazo told a late-night news conference, referring to the PRI machinery’s support for Labastida. “But at this moment, our job is to strengthen the party.”

Scattered incidents of fraud and irregularities were reported in the primary, which was open to all registered voters. But the PRI said the race was generally fair.

Sunday’s election marked a drastic change in one of the central features of Mexico’s political system, the dedazo, in which the outgoing president “fingered” the politician virtually assured of being his successor. The dedazo was seen as giving Mexico political stability for decades, but it has come under increasing attack both inside and outside the PRI.

President Ernesto Zedillo, in effect the leader of the PRI, has championed the primary as a key step in the country’s transition from virtual one-party rule to genuine democracy.

Zedillo was so anxious to prove that he was not quietly assisting a favored candidate that he checked off all four contenders on his ballot, he announced Sunday night.

“I did it knowing it would annul my vote,” the president said in a nationally televised address. “But only in this way could I carry out my commitment of strict neutrality.”

With 58% of the polling places reporting, Labastida was leading in 272 of the 300 electoral districts, while Madrazo was leading in 21. A plurality of the districts was needed to win Sunday’s vote.

The other two candidates--Manuel Bartlett and Humberto Roque Villanueva--were trailing badly.

The district system, similar to the U.S. electoral college, contributed to the lopsided nature of the victory. An exit poll by the Mexico City daily Reforma found the general vote was closer, with 61% for Labastida, compared with 29% for Madrazo.

Labastida, 57, an economist who sat in Zedillo’s Cabinet and was widely viewed as the president’s favorite, had been expected to win based on pre-vote polls. But Madrazo, 47, a self-styled party rebel, had posed a tough challenge to Labastida by portraying him as the “official” candidate.

All three of Labastida’s competitors had complained during the campaign that the PRI’s formidable machinery had swung behind the Zedillo ally, giving him an unfair advantage. But the PRI was most worried by such charges from the popular Madrazo, who is on leave as governor of the southern state of Tabasco.

Labastida is certain to negotiate feverishly to try to keep the losers and their followers from bolting to opposition parties.

If the party stays united, it will be in a strong position to defeat Mexico’s divided opposition. But a rupture could cost the PRI the presidency next year.

Labastida told foreign correspondents on the eve of the election that he saw a 60% chance that Madrazo would split from the PRI anyway.

“Even if he goes, we’re still going to win” the presidential race in July, Labastida declared.

The PRI deployed an army of nearly half a million people nationwide Sunday to staff more than 64,000 voting booths set up on sidewalks, in empty taco shops and on the patios of homes. An estimated 10 million people cast ballots in the open primary, which followed a three-month campaign that focused more on personal attacks than on issues.

Sunday’s vote was beset with disorganization reflecting party militants’ lack of experience with a primary. Many polling stations opened after the official 8 a.m. start. In Toluca, an industrial city west of the capital, PRI representatives in one middle-class neighborhood had to borrow a three-step stool and a plank from a nearby house so they could erect an impromptu voting table.

Labastida could face the toughest presidential race in modern Mexican history. The PRI’s dominance has eroded in the face of increasingly strong opposition parties, voting reforms and a series of economic crises and corruption scandals. Zedillo is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection.

In Mexico City, the PRI held a primary for a mayoral candidate as well as a presidential standard-bearer. Three candidates competed for the mayoral slot: Jesus Silva Herzog, a former ambassador to the United States, and two PRI activists, Roberto Campa and Silvestre Fernandez.

Regardless of their preferred candidate, many voters said Sunday that they wanted their ballot to bring change to the PRI and the country. But several expressed skepticism about the party’s democratization effort even as they were taking part in it.

Alfredo Tapia Garcia, 62, was running a polling table in Metepec, a town just south of Toluca known for its intricate ceramic handicrafts.

“We’ll have to wait until the actual election on July 2 to see if this presidential primary worked. If our candidate loses, we will have made a big mistake and we will return to the dedazo,” Tapia said. “But we hope that with this open process, people will come back to the party.”

Another voter, Marcos Flores Robles, said, “Mexico needs a total change.” But he voted for Labastida, a PRI official and senior bureaucrat for 36 years, because “there can’t be a drastic change, we can’t afford to experiment dangerously.”

Carlos Mota, 42, of Metepec said he had voted for Madrazo to protest against the traditional cargada, or stampede, in favor of the official candidate.

“Even though I don’t think [Madrazo] is necessarily the best possibility, I am against the imposition of a candidate, and I think there was a strong stampede toward Labastida,” Mota said.

The word didn’t come down from the party officially to vote for Labastida, Mota added. Instead, people just picked up hidden signals.

“It is something inherent in us,” he said. “We still deny ourselves the willingness to change.”

The PRI went to great lengths to try to prevent fraud, a frequent party practice in the past. In Sunday’s vote, three PRI volunteers ran each table, stamping voters’ thumbs with indelible ink and recording their federal voter registration number on a sheet to prevent duplicate voting. Citizens could cast ballots only in the precinct where they were registered.

But many campaign officials charged that the big problems in the election occurred before primary day, as voters were wooed with government resources and wild spending.

One such irregularity was apparent Saturday outside Acapulco, where rural dwellers were invited to sign up for government-sponsored temporary jobs at a last-minute meeting organized by Labastida supporters.

About 200 people crowded into a courtyard, bedecked with Labastida posters, in the community of Tunzingo, hoping to receive assistance in an area of widespread poverty.

The offer alone was enough to gain Floriberto Bello’s vote.

“Whoever gives us help--that’s who I’ll go for,” said Bello, a farmer and father of four who said he had fallen on hard times in nearby Campanario.

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Times staff writer Ken Ellingwood in Tunzingo contributed to this report.