Final Tally Shows Decisive Win for Mexico’s Fox

Final figures released Friday from Mexico’s presidential election confirmed a decisive win for opposition candidate Vicente Fox, but delays in tallying a pair of Senate districts left the eventual makeup of that crucial body up in the air.

The Federal Electoral Institute, overseeing its first presidential contest as an independent agency, said Fox and his center-right National Action Party, or PAN, won 42.5% of the vote Sunday, compared with 36.1% for Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The historic vote toppled the PRI, which had ruled for 71 years. A third candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, got 16.6%, according to results from the nation’s 300 federal voting districts.

But holdups in counting votes from Senate districts in the central state of Puebla and the Pacific state of Sinaloa mean that final tallies will not be available until Sunday. The latest results showed that the PRI was holding a five-seat edge over Fox’s PAN but that it was short of a majority in the 128-seat Senate. In the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, the PAN was holding an 11-seat advantage over the PRI but not a majority.

The election made history even before the first vote was cast. It was the country’s first presidential race since a series of electoral reforms gave opposition parties a more even chance and sought to curb past fraudulent tactics of the PRI.

The reforms and an intensive advertising campaign by the election institute to assure voters of a clean vote appeared to pay off. Officials said 64% of the country’s 58.7 million registered voters turned out. The rate was below that reported for most presidential elections during the previous 36 years, but past vote manipulation makes precise comparisons highly unreliable.

Observer groups from Mexico and abroad issued largely glowing assessments of the fairness of the vote, although some reports noted lapses, mainly in rural polling places. A review by the Mexican watchdog group Alianza Civica found that as many as a fifth of the ballots were cast under conditions that did not guarantee full confidentiality. In some cases, booths had not been installed; in others, members of political parties talked with people waiting to vote.

But most reviews were favorable. Former President Carter, who witnessed the polling, labeled the election “a historic turning point of the most profound significance.” The Carter Center said that, of 3,043 “improprieties” reported on election day, all but 79 were resolved the same day. Most were minor.

A separate group of 45 U.S. Democrats said that despite some problems, such as a shortage of ballots at special sites for out-of-town voters, the “watershed elections set a powerful example that encourages political progress. They will serve as a strong signal to those struggling for democracy in this hemisphere and beyond.”

The PRI’s representative to the electoral institute lauded the election as “clean, transparent and according to the law,” despite the unhappy results for his party.

“The message from the voters was in favor of the exercise of politics, of democracy, of plurality and of peaceful social coexistence,” PRI representative Marco Antonio Zazueta said during Friday’s meeting of the institute’s governing council.

Scattered post-electoral clashes outside Mexico City, the capital, among groups fighting over local results continued Friday. Riot police in the state of Mexico clashed with PRI supporters who had tried to storm an election office amid a dispute over the winner of a mayoral race. Elsewhere in the state, angry Fox supporters burned already-counted ballots this week in protest of alleged fraud by the PRI. Confrontations around the state resulted in several injuries and buses being set afire.

Also in Mexico state, the PRI mayor of Huixquilucan reported being shot at Thursday night while riding in his car.