|
Allies of president halt main opposition party’s momentum
Allies of President Felipe Calderón did better than analysts had forecast in gubernatorial elections Sunday, halting the main opposition party’s momentum before presidential elections are held in 2012.
An alliance between Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN) and other factions unexpectedly beat the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa states, according to official results. The PRI unseated their opponents in the smaller states of Aguascalientes, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas. The six other governorships decided yesterday didn’t change hands, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000, lost in states that were its longtime bastions of power, said George Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. That will hurt the party, which won legislative elections last year and leads in polls to recapture the presidency in 2012, he said.
“The PRI took it on the chin,” Grayson said in a telephone interview from Mexico City.
The Mexican peso declined for a sixth straight day, falling 0.1 percent to 13.0909 per U.S. dollar in early morning trading.
Calderón’s PAN, a pro-business party, formed an alliance with the Party of the Democratic Revolution, known as PRD, in a bid to a block a PRI victory in five states. Calderón defeated the PRD’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador by less than a percentage point in 2006. The parties disagree on a wide range of issues, from abortion to the opening of the energy industry to private investment.
POPULATION BREAKDOWN
While the number of governorships held by Calderón’s PAN and the PRI didn’t change after Sunday’s election, the states that the National Action Party alliance won are larger than the states it lost, helping the PAN increase the total population it governs by more than 30 percent, said Josefina Vázquez Mota, head of the PAN in the lower house of Congress.
Still, PRI officials said they fared well in the election. Preliminary official results and exit polls show the party in control of 19 of Mexico’s 31 states. Final election results are still being calculated.
According to Bloomberg, the PRI unseated the PAN in Tlaxcala and Aguascalientes states, and took power from the PRD in Zacatecas state, polls showed. It also held onto power in Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Durango, Hidalgo, Quintana Roo and Veracruz states.
POLITICAL FORCE
“These elections confirm that the PRI is the biggest political force in the country,” Beatriz Paredes, the party’s head, told reporters in comments broadcast on Milenio Television.
The results will help break the PRI’s momentum ahead of the 2012 vote, said the PAN’s Vázquez Mota.
“A new electoral panorama has been drawn,” Vázquez Mota, who was education minister under Calderón, said in a telephone interview. “The PRI’s claim that they would sweep the elections didn’t come true.”
The states in which the PAN prevailed represent 11 percent of the country’s total population and 7.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), while the states in which the PRI won represent 3 percent of the population and 2.7 percent of GDP, according to the national statistics agency.
TRAILING IN POLLS
The PAN is trailing in polls for the July 2012 presidential election. Enrique Peña Nieto, governor of the State of Mexico and a PRI member, is the leading candidate, according to a poll released June 14 by Mexico City-based polling group Consulta Mitofsky. Peña Nieto has 25 percent support of those surveyed compared with 6 percent for López Obrador, his closest rival.
Several incidents of violence occurred while polls were open yesterday. The brother of Trinidad Pacheco Diaz, a PAN candidate for mayor in Chihuahua state, was killed by gunmen, the Interior Ministry said in an e-mailed statement. In Durango, an armed group shut down a polling station, Milenio reported on its website.
Egidio Torre Cantú, who became candidate in Tamaulipas state after his brother, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, was assassinated June 28, cast his ballot wearing a bullet-proof vest under his white button-down shirt, according to images broadcast on Milenio Television.
Torre Cantú was the highest-level politician to be assassinated since presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was killed in 1994.
The country’s deteriorating security probably led to a high abstention rate Sunday, said Guillermo Garduno, a security analyst with the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City, Bloomberg reported.
|
Share Link: 
