|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| OPPOSITION GAINS GROUND | |
 July 7, 1997 
|
||
 |
|
|
|
CHARLES KRAUSE: Sunday's election marked the worst defeat for Mexico's ruling party since it first took power nearly 70 years ago. The Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known as the PRI, suffered setbacks across the board and across the country at federal, state, and local levels. Most of the attention focused on Mexico City, where voters went to the polls to elect their first elected mayor in the capital's modern history. The winner was Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a 63 year old political veteran who broke with the PRI a decade ago.
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Opposition
victory |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
CHARLES KRAUSE: In a short victory speech, Cardenas urged his supporters to "work for democracy." He also told them he plans to run for president in the year 2000. A center leftist, most of Cardenas's support comes from Mexico city's working class and poor. But elsewhere in the country it was the conservative opposition, not the left, that proved most effective challenging the PRI.
Opinion polls showed that Zedillo himself is popular, in part because of his support for public campaign financing and other electoral reforms. Most independent observers said yesterday's election was probably the cleanest and fairest in Mexico's modern history. And today, Mexico City's newspapers hailed the outcome, calling the opposition victory "the end to 70 years of hegemony." |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
Now,
with yesterday's election, Cardenas becomes the most powerful opposition
figure in the country. For the next three years, he'll govern Mexico's
capital, which has a population of nearly 20 million people, more than
1/5 of Mexico's total population.
As
Mayor, Cardenas will control a budget of nearly $5 billion and have
a national platform from which to amplify his criticisms of Mexico's
political system, the PRI and the government. At a press conference
shortly after the polls closed last night, Cardenas declared victory
after exit polls showed him winning by a nearly 2 to 1 margin.
CUAUHTEMOC
CARDENAS, Mayor-elect, Mexico City: (speaking through interpreter) With
responsibility for what has been, I know the problems which we have
to confront with responsibility. This happiness, this jubilation that
we see now we will have to sustain for the next three years. Let's work
for the city. Let's work toward progress. Let's work for democracy.
Of
six state gubernatorial elections, the PRI apparently won four of them,
but in two other states, Nuevo Leon in the North, and Queretaro, near
Mexico City, it was the conservative National Action Party, called the
PAN that won. Also at stake yesterday were a third of the seats in Mexico's
senate and all 500 seats in the chamber of deputies, the lower house
of congress. With 80 per cent of the votes counted, it appeared possible
the PRI might also lose control of the chamber of deputies for the first
time ever. 
The
final outcome of the congressional races, however, may not be decided
for several days. Despite the setback, Mexico's president, Ernesto Zedillo
-- the PRI's titular head -- said he would work with Cardenas and an
opposition congress, if that turns out to be the case.