Mexico Power Shift Extends to Legislature

Mexico’s longtime ruling party suffered a fresh blow Monday as returns from landmark elections showed that it had lost for the first time not just the presidency but its dominance in the federal Congress.

The returns indicated that voters had thoroughly repudiated the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which oversaw the construction of modern Mexico. They handed a stunning victory to Vicente Fox, the charismatic businessman who will be the first non-PRI president in 71 years.

Fox’s influence in Sunday’s election turned out to be deeper than anyone had imagined. His center-right National Action Party, or PAN, became the leading force in both houses of Congress, according to nearly complete official returns.

These results augur a transformation of Congress, which has long been a rubber-stamp body for PRI presidents. Only in 1997 did the PRI lose its majority in the lower house, but it still held a majority in the Senate, allowing it to block opposition initiatives.

“This is an earthquake!” exclaimed Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez, a prominent political analyst.

The legislative results were just one milestone that greeted stunned Mexicans on Monday.

The PRI executive branch began to organize the hand-over to another party. President Ernesto Zedillo met with Fox to pave the way for a smooth transition Dec. 1, when the new president will take office. The men agreed to cooperate closely, even by drawing up next year’s budget together.

Zedillo also huddled with the leadership and governors of his party to discuss for the first time the PRI’s role as an opposition force. The party’s president, Dulce Maria Sauri, planned to present her resignation today, said a top party official, Javier Trevino.

Meanwhile, from cosmopolitan coffee shops to village plazas, Mexicans struggled to grasp the turning point in their history. To most, the election was less about policy issues than about whether to continue the political system that has been in place for most of the 20th century.

In Mexico, “a transfer from one group to another always, always produced a civil war or coup,” said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political scientist in Mexico City. “We are feeling something no Mexican has ever felt. We feel different.”

Rafael Robledo, a 20-year-old engineering student in Guanajuato, Fox’s home turf, agreed.

“It is new, this democracy--it hasn’t existed here. It seemed almost impossible here to have a new person, new ideas, a new government,” he marveled.

Clinton Congratulates the President-Elect

The international community marveled too. Accolades poured in from around the globe. President Clinton telephoned Fox to congratulate him and called Zedillo to express admiration for his stewardship of the democratic process, U.S. officials said.

The president-elect told reporters that many world leaders had told him they were surprised “that in only 24 hours we have crossed this bridge” to beginning Mexico’s peaceful transition.

Financial markets were buoyant. The Mexican stock market surged 6.1%, and the peso gained nearly 3% against the dollar. Analysts said the markets reacted positively to a clear winner and a watershed election that put Mexico more firmly in the camp of democratic nations.

With 93% of voting stations reporting, Fox had won 42.7% of the ballots, Mexico’s electoral authority said Monday. PRI candidate Francisco Labastida, a longtime bureaucrat, had 35.8%. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, making his third unsuccessful run for the presidency, trailed with 16.5%.

The rest of the vote went to two minor-party candidates.

Fox lifted the PAN, which for years was essentially a regional northern party, to an unexpected victory. It took 39.5% of the vote for the Senate, compared with 37.2% for the PRI and 19.3% for the PRD. In the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, the PAN led with 39.6% of the vote, compared with 37.4% for the PRI and 19.1% for the PRD, according to the nearly complete returns.

The allocation of seats in Congress will not be announced until all results are in, probably midweek. But the PAN’s strength in Congress is likely to be even greater than its percentage of the vote indicated, because of the complex mathematical formula used to apportion seats, according to TV station forecasts.

Fox’s Party Also Wins 2 Governorships

The PAN also won the two governorships that were up for grabs, in Morelos and Guanajuato states. And it came close to beating the PRD in the Mexico City mayor’s race, even though the PRD candidate entered the election with a huge lead in the polls. With most of the votes counted, Santiago Creel had 34% to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 40%.

The PRI didn’t win any of the 16 borough presidencies up for election in Mexico City. The PRD won 11 and the PAN took five.

Silva-Herzog Marquez, the political analyst, said he was stunned at how the PRI was defeated across vast swaths of Mexico. Even the southern and more rural states are no longer a party stronghold.

“We see the destruction of the regional machinery of the PRI, which had previously appeared able to give the victory to Labastida,” he said.

He attributed the change to Mexico’s transformation in recent decades from a mostly rural, poorly educated country to a manufacturing power with a mostly urban population.

“A country that is more urban, more educated and younger is increasingly beyond the traditional mechanisms of party control,” he said.

On Monday, the executive branch began what appeared to be a remarkably peaceful, even friendly, plan for the hand-over. Officials at the powerful Interior Ministry said they planned to meet with Fox’s team to arrange for his personal security. In the evening, Fox visited Zedillo at the presidential palace, Los Pinos. The men agreed that they would meet periodically over the next five months, as would Cabinet secretaries with the politicians slated to replace them. Fox said he and Zedillo would even coordinate on next year’s budget, which must be passed by Congress by year’s end.

“We’re going to ensure that this is a harmonious transition toward the next government, with stability,” Fox told reporters after the one-hour meeting.

Meanwhile, the PRI began grappling with its future as an opposition party. Zedillo met with the PRI leadership and with PRI governors, who still lead two-thirds of the country’s states. One governor, Fernando Silva Nieto of San Luis Potosi, told journalists that the party elite had been discussing how it would work with the new president. He vowed that as an opposition party, the PRI will be “responsible and civilized.”

The PRI ‘Needs to Return to Its Origins’

Another governor, Melquiades Morales of Puebla, said the PRI needs to work harder and reorganize.

“It needs to return to its origins, keeping in more direct communication, closer to the people,” Morales said.

Analysts predicted that the PRI could experience a fierce power struggle and even collapse once it loses control of the presidency. For decades, the party served as the president’s right arm, and the line between the PRI and the government has been fuzzy.

Fox announced a flurry of postelection plans: He said he will seek to meet Mexico’s governors, travel the country, then visit the United States, Europe and elsewhere in Latin America. Fox has announced that he will stick to Mexico’s key policies on issues such as free trade. But he has vowed to create greater growth and increase the country’s democratization.

Fox also announced that he will launch a nationwide talent search to select three contenders for every post in his Cabinet, whom he would then interview. It is a novel idea in a country where political appointees have been chosen behind closed doors.

Fox insisted that he will be magnanimous and include members of different parties in his Cabinet.

“We are going to seek throughout the country, everywhere, the best Mexican men and women for every job,” he said in an interview with Mexico City radio station Monitor. He said he will complete the task in two months, in order to have his team ready well in advance of the inauguration.

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Times staff writer Jill Leovy in Guanajuato contributed to this report.