Minor-Party Candidate Drops Out of Mexico Presidential Race, Backs Fox

One of Mexico’s six presidential candidates formally withdrew from the race Thursday, throwing his support behind the leading opposition candidate.

The move by Porfirio Munoz Ledo came as the campaign continued to heat up ahead of the July 2 election, with opposition candidates accusing the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, of pressuring voters.

Most polls show Vicente Fox of the opposition center-right National Action Party, or PAN, and the PRI’s Francisco Labastida in a tight race.

Munoz Ledo, a former president of both the PRI and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, was the candidate of the small Authentic Mexican Revolution Party.

He had already infuriated that party’s leaders by calling for a united front against the PRI behind Fox and asking prosecutors to probe drug allegations against his own party’s president.

The Authentic party voted last month to ask him to step down, and on Thursday he presented a formal resignation to the Federal Electoral Institute.

Munoz Ledo has agreed to serve on Fox’s transition team if the PAN candidate is elected.

Although officials say the election will be the fairest in Mexican history, and the first run by an independent electoral agency, complaints have mounted about PRI pressure on voters.

In two states, opposition parties say they have found warehouses stocked by the ruling party with preelection gifts such as bicycles, sewing machines and sacks of cement.

Some also have accused the PRI of collecting voting credential numbers at the same time that the government dispenses aid.

The government and PRI have repeatedly denied pressuring voters or offering bribes.