Former Mayor Joins Race for Presidency

A former Mexico City mayor who quit the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has announced that he will run for president in the July election, threatening to further divide the opposition vote. Manuel Camacho Solis, who in 1998 formed the Party of the Democratic Center, said he had decided to run because of the opposition’s failure to form an alliance in a bid to break the PRI’s 70-year-old grip on power. Camacho left the PRI after being passed over as presidential candidate to succeed Carlos Salinas de Gortari, whose term ended in 1994. Camacho was sidelined from the party altogether when he was dismissed as government negotiator in peace talks with Zapatista rebels in the southern state of Chiapas.