Mexico’s Landmark Campaign Ends With Promises of New and Better Era

A historic presidential campaign that has posed the first real threat to Mexico’s one-party rule came to a jubilant close Wednesday, as the leading candidates promised that the country is about to shed decades of economic upheaval and corruption.

The top candidates, Francisco Labastida of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and challenger Vicente Fox, departed from the bitter attacks they have exchanged in the country’s first U.S.-style campaign.

Instead, they vowed economic growth and justice in their closing rallies, the last campaign events permitted before Sunday’s election.

“You have a date with history!” yelled Fox, of the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, to an adoring audience frantically waving blue-and-white PAN flags here in the central state of Guanajuato. “You have the opportunity to create a dignified, proud Mexico for your children.”

Labastida was no less euphoric as he addressed about 60,000 supporters in Culiacan in the northern state of Sinaloa.

“The era of sacrifice in this country has ended,” he proclaimed. “The years of belt-tightening are over.”

Labastida and Fox are nearly tied as they head into Sunday’s balloting. The upbeat nature of their closing rallies contrasted with widespread nervousness about the result of the election.

A Fox win would end the 71-year presidential reign of the PRI, which has been trying to shed its authoritarian past and become more democratic.

If Fox loses by a narrow margin, protests could ensue. Opposition parties charge that the PRI has engaged in vote-buying and coercion during the campaign, which the party denies. Although Mexico has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create a professional electoral organization, such pre-vote manipulation could rob the election of credibility, opposition politicians say.

“I don’t even want to think about” what could happen if Fox narrowly loses, said Josefina Hernandez, a shoe factory employee at the Fox rally. She looked around at the crowd of 35,000 jammed into a sports stadium, in an advanced stage of what Mexicans have dubbed “Foximania.” They were chanting and flashing the victory sign and had plastered Fox stickers on their foreheads and T-shirts. “Look at all these people,” Hernandez said.

Fox, in a dark suit and his classic “Fox” belt buckle, adopted a presidential tone at the rally, declaring that he was prepared to work with politicians from all parties.

To his list of campaign offers--better jobs, increased education, low inflation and security--he added a new promise: the creation of a special commission to investigate ties between drug traffickers and past government officials.

Fox only indirectly referred to a third candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, whom he has fruitlessly wooed for an informal alliance. Cardenas, who trails in the polls, has rejected Fox’s argument that he could split the opposition vote.

“If you are tired of the PRI, sick of corruption, if you want a pluralistic government, the only option in the country is voting for the Alliance for Change!” Fox cried, referring to his own group.

There was less enthusiasm in the crowd at Labastida’s closing campaign rally in a park in the Tres Rios complex, an urban renewal project undertaken by Labastida when he was governor of Sinaloa from 1986 to 1992.

“With great emotion, with my heart in my hand, I come home to close my campaign,” he said to cheers from a crowd waving banners in the green, white and red colors shared by the PRI and the Mexican flag.

Labastida, sunburned from days of outdoor rallies, made no mention of Fox or Cardenas in his 20-minute address. Instead, he focused on promises of better times ahead for a population that he acknowledged has been battered by successive economic crises at the end of every presidential term since 1976.

He promised wage increases would at least equal inflation each year and said he would lower painfully high natural gas prices and block unfair imports of farm products that hurt northwestern Mexican farmers.

Labastida made only a veiled reference to his campaign’s barrage of attacks portraying Fox as a dangerous demagogue and traitor. The PRI candidate called on Mexicans “to vote for change with direction, so we won’t risk all that we have built up in this country.”

The Labastida campaign has flooded the airwaves with ads attacking Fox in recent weeks. In addition, PRI officials have presented copies of checks they say represent foreign contributions to Fox’s campaign, which could be a federal offense.

On Wednesday morning, Fox announced that he was suing Labastida and top PRI officials for making false allegations about his campaign finances.

“In these last moments of the presidential campaign, they have intentionally communicated false information to the society, in order to discredit” the Fox campaign, the candidate said.

Javier Trevino, a top Labastida aide, said the combination of tough campaign ads attacking Fox and Labastida’s increased focus on policy issues give the PRI candidate strong momentum at the end of the campaign.

“The ‘Teflon effect’ is no longer working for Fox; the charges are sticking to him now,” said Trevino, referring to what analysts have described as Fox’s ability to dance around contradictions and errors.

Trevino called Fox’s filing of charges against Labastida “an act of desperation.”

Cardenas ended his campaign with a sweep through southern Mexico. He dashed any hopes that he would make an eleventh-hour concession to Fox’s appeal for a united opposition.

“On the second of July, don’t cast a single vote for the PRI or the PAN candidates,” Cardenas told a rally.

The last day of the lengthy campaign featured one of its most bizarre stunts. A perfume factory manager and several employees spread 8 tons of perfume on one of Mexico City’s main freeways so that citizens could “smell” the impending change in Mexico’s government.

“We are perfuming the Periferico with this idea, with the joy of supporting Vicente Fox,” employee Bernardo Fajardo told a Mexican TV station. However, the city’s impromptu “Via Olorosa” caused immediate problems as 18 cars skidded out of control, forcing a temporary shutdown of a major artery.

PAN leaders denied any connection to the incident.

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Times correspondent Chris Kraul and special correspondent Jose Diaz contributed to this report.