Sympathy for the PRI?

Priístas head for the exits after a June 26 campaign rally in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, featuring State of Mexico Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto.

Federico Arreola, whose incessant tweets - almost all of the anti-Calderón, pro-López Obrador variety -  can be insufferable, often pens excellent columns for Sendero del Peje, a news organization with obvious López Obrador sympathies.

In his July 1 column, he calls the June 28 assassination of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre Cantú in Tamaulipas the party's only significant "campaign act" in any of the 12 state and local elections scheduled for July 4.

A series of leaked phone conversations, suggesting improper campaign meddling and use of social programs for electoral purposes by PRI governors, had cast an unfavourable light on the PRI in some of its most notorious bastions of retrograde politics such as Veracruz and Oaxaca. Now, instead of being viewed as presiding over evil empires and stopping at nothing to retain power, the PRI has some sympathy on its side.

Additionally, the assassination is expected to diminish voter turnout - a factor that always benefits the PRI.

"Fear," Arreloa wrote, "Works in favor of the PRI." 

The party depends heavily in many states on its "voto duro" (firm vote) of loyalists, campesinos, unionized workers and government employees - whose jobs depend on the PRI retaining power. The voto duro, along with those lured by its vote-buying schemes and motivated by coercion, is usually enough to win (at the ballot box) unless voter turnout is hight.

The PRI, it must be said, knows how to turn out its vote and is famed in places such as Oaxaca for its year-round organizing and ability to ingratiate itself into the life of every small town and ejido in the state. As one priísta in Oaxaca told me recently, "The PRI organizes all the time. The other parties start organizing three months before an election."

Another factor to watch is the dependability of the PRI vote. As political science professor Federico Estévez of ITAM is fond of pointing out: The PRI vote has stayed roughly the same over the years, while the PAN and PRD votes have varied. The only exception to that might have been the 2006 presidential election, when the party had an unpopular candidate and many priístas drifted over to the campaigns of PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the PAN.

Expect the  PRI's voto duro to deliver on July 4 and the PAN and PRD votes to remain low.

Roberto Madrazo surfaces

He's back! Former PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo surfaced last week in Monterrey, where he blasted the PAN-PRD alliances, formed to challenge the PRI in the July 4 gubernatorial races, for lacking "scruples."

His outburst marked the latest outburst by a prominent Priísta against the alliances between the right-leaning PAN and left-leaning PRD that aim to defeat the PRI in some the party's most solid strongholds such as Oaxaca, Puebla and Hidalgo - all places, like Madrazo's home state of Tabasco, with notorious reputations for retrograde politics, authoritarian governance and elections that are anything but squeaky clean.

"What they're uniting for is only an interest in power for the sake of power itself. You can't unite ideologies so different as those that exist between the the PAN and PRD with the lone proposal of defeating the PRI," Madrazo said.

Of course, the PRI - like many political parties - could be accused of seeking power the sake of power itself and being unscrupulous for trying to unite disparate viewpoints on contentious social and economic issues. After all, PRI party president Beatriz Paredes - a woman often accused of lacking the courage of her convictions - has been taken to task for playing up her "social democratic" and feminist tendencies, but staying silent as 18 state governments, the majority of them run by the PRI, outlawed abortion under all circumstances.

And Madrazo would know a thing or two about seeking power for the sake of power, too. Many of his actions as PRI president last decade were made with an eye toward capturing the 2006 presidential nomination. He developed a sordid reputation for hardball politics. The PRI was an obstructionist force in Congress under his watch and he clashed with SNTE teachers' union boss Elba Esther Gordillo and many state governors - who not only stayed on the sidelines during his presidential campaign, but made sure he didn't win.

Madrazo's motives for blasting the coalition are unknown, but the move reflects a general unease among Priístas over the issue of the electoral coalitions formed to confront them. (Recall the supposed PAN-PRI deal to have the PRI back a tax increase if the PAN wouldn't form an electoral alliance for the 2011 State of Mexico gubernatorial election.) Madrazo, for all of his enemies in the PRI, gained his much of his support in Southern Mexico and in orphan states - states such as Jalisco, Guanajuato and Baja California, places that have solid bases of PRI support, but no powerful PRI governors to marshal votes for preferred candidates. Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz - whose regime is so despised by the PAN and PRD that they would unite against it - was a solid Madrazo backer, which perhaps helps to explain the outburst.

Madrazo would know about coalitions, too.

The infamous TUCOM (Everyone United Against Madrazo) formed during the PRI primary to select a single candidate that would face Madrazo for the nomination. TUCOM chose State of Mexico Gov. Arturo Montiel, who was subsequently sandbagged - allegedly by Madrazo's campaign - for ethical problems that included his owning properties in Europe and such luxury spots as Careyes, an exclusive enclave on Jalisco's Costa Alegre.

Madrazo's 2006 PRI presidential campaign also struck a deal with the Green Party - even though the PVEM had a promising candidate in Bernardo de la Garza. In the waning days of the campaign, he welcomed back the campesino wing of the now defunct Alternativa party - the same gang that advanced the nomination of discount drug baron Víctor González Torres (aka: Dr. Simi) and clashed with the party's 2006 nominee, Patricia Mercado.

His coalition building all amounted to a hill a beans, however. Madrazo led a badly divided PRI to its worst finish ever as he gained barely 22 percent of the popular vote and failed to win a plurality in any of the Republic's 31 states or the Federal District.

Election failure did little to remedy is bad reputation. He entered a German marathon in 2007 and won his age group, but, mysteriously, he didn't pass through all of the checkpoints along the course and was disqualified.

Now he's back - clean-shaven - perhaps proving that no reputation is ever too unsavoury for Mexico's political system, which has an enormous capacity for recycling disgraced figures.

Increasing Decentralization Stirs Disquiet in Mexico

State of Mexico Governor, Enrique Peña Nieto, arrives Nov. 12 for a meeting with Mexico's Catholic bishops' conference in Cuautitlán Izcalli.

David Agren | 01 Dec 2009
World Politics Review

MEXICO CITY -- Lower house lawmakers convened into the wee hours of the Revolution Day long weekend, Nov. 16, to approve the spending portions of Mexico's 2010 budget, which had been bogged down by demands for increased spending on the beleaguered rural economy from campesino groups linked to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The campesino groups got most of what they asked for, but according to the subsequent media spin, the PRI's 19 state governors emerged as the real winners in the budget process -- the first since the PRI and its ally, the Green Party, won control of the lower house in the July 5 mid-term elections. The governors received funding for highways and public works projects such as plazas and charro rings -- the outdoor arenas that host Mexican-style rodeo events. Conveniently, they also extracted more money for states staging gubernatorial races in 2010 -- as well as for the populous state of Mexico, whose governor, the PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto, is the early favorite for the party's 2012 presidential nomination. The governors even secured concessions that loosen some of the accountability for funds flowing to the state and local levels, where discretion spending can be the norm and transparency is often lacking.

The rest of the article can be viewed here, at World Politics Review.

A blast from the past

With the PRI making such a comeback on July 5, this story originally published in early March on the PRI marking its 80th anniversary earlier this year seems apt.










80 years on, PRI strong

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

Many foreigners and Mexicans best know the Institutional Revolutionary Party for the inglorious acts carried out during its 71 years of uninterrupted rule.

Those watching Mexico from abroad will likely recall the bloody crackdown on student protesters at Tlatelolco on the eve of the 1968 Olympics. Some may remember the Dirty War of the 1970s, when hundreds or possibly even thousands of rebels and left-wing activists disappeared. Then in 1988, when change in governance seemed a possibility - even if only a remote one - a mysterious computer crash in the Interior Secretariat wiped out early election results favoring the opposition.

For those living in Mexico, the PRI's actions touched their daily lives, sometimes for the worse. Recurring peso crises derailed the country's promising ascents toward First World status. The government's inept response to the 1985 earthquake left tens of thousands to fend for themselves. And come election time, coercive vote-grabbing schemes regularly suppressed the democratic will.

But as the PRI turns 80 on Wednesday, party members are largely unapologetic for any past transgressions or excesses. And, according to recent public opinion polls, many Mexicans seem willing to forgive too.

PRI members instead speak proudly of their legacy as the party that built modern Mexico and its most cherished institutions, ushered in stability and order after the chaos of the Revolution and presided over a country that has never suffered a coup - an unmatched feat in most of Latin America.

"People from other countries in Latin America always saw the PRI as a grand example of Latin American politics," said Rafael Rodríguez, a former national party president and ex-governor of Campeche. "I don't say that with false pride, or false modesty. I say that because it's a fact."

PRI members also boast of achieving the social objectives that were demanded by those who took up arms in the Revolution: labor rights, providing education that is both secular and free of cost and the disruption of haciendas and ensuing distribution of its parcels to landless campesinos. On the economic front, the PRI oversaw an expansion that saw the gross domestic product grow six-fold between 1930 and 1970.

"There wasn't only growth, but growth with social peace, with social stability," Rodríguez said.

Of course, many in Latin America hold far less effusive opinions on the PRI and its practices. Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, for instance, once branded the successive PRI governments the "perfect dictatorship."

But the political system that the PRI built - with its strong respect for the presidency and institutions - has had staying power, as have the vices from that system - which include corruption, the formation of patronage groups and the practice of rewarding friends while severely punishing foes.

The political culture developed by the PRI is so entrenched in Mexico that former presidential candidate Patricia Mercado, who captured prominence by leading a small left-wing party that bashed the PRI way of doing politics, once candidly commented while campaigning in 2006: "I think that there's an inner PRIísta in all of us."

IN THE BEGINNING

The PRI dates back to 1929, a period of chaos and political instability. The Revolution had ended barely a decade earlier, a Catholic uprising against anti-clerical measures was flaring in western Mexico and the country was still reeling from the 1928 assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregón.

As Rodríguez and other PRI members tell it, former President Plutarco Elías Calles proposed the creation of a big-tent party that would be known as the National Revolutionary Party, or PNR.

The PNR would envelop the country's disparate political factions, impose order and solidify the gains won during the Revolution.

"It was a political movement that brought together the previous forces of the Revolution that were dispersed among military commanders and civilian groups," said PRI Deputy Alfredo Ríos Camarena. "No political body existed that represented in a uniform way all of the interests and principles produced by the Revolution and the Constitution of 1917."

Some historians, however, interpret the PNR's founding as nothing more than a naked power grab by Calles, who had served as president from 1924 to 1928 and is considered to have been the dominant political figure until 1936.

"The PNR was a party that brought together caudillos (strongmen) . [It]was the product of the most authoritarian tendencies of the Revolution," said Ilán Semo, a political historian at the Universidad Iberoamericana. "[It] was one of the greatest evils of the Revolution."

According to Semo, the new party showed its authoritarian tendencies almost immediately. The PNR's candidate in the 1929 election, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, won in a process widely considered to have been rigged.

The victory was just the first of many for the PNR and its subsequent incarnations. Allegations of fraud, too, would continue.

CREATING A SYSTEM

The PNR solidified its gains in the 1930s, but was still a work in progress when Lázaro Cárdenas took office in 1934. He rechristened the PNR as the Mexican Revolutionary Party, or PRM, and went about incorporating broad sectors of the society into the PRM, including labor unions and campesino groups. The incorporation of broad sectors of society set the stage for a corporatist system that the party would leverage for support in subsequent decades.

Cárdenas is perhaps best known for his populist measures, however. He expropriated the oil industry in 1938 and accelerated land reforms to redistribute vast tracts of hacienda land and create the "ejido" system of communal property ownership. He also introduced an education reform and expanded state ownership of numerous enterprises.

PRI members point to these initiatives as fulfilling social objectives that were fought for in the Revolution.

Semo said the moves simply reflected pragmatism: Distributing land nullified one of the main issues behind potential campesino uprisings, while expropriating the oil industry put "enormous economic power" in the hands of the state.

A leadership style known as "presidencialismo," which gave the president broad powers that would be transferred every six years to his preferred successor in a process know as the "dedazo," also took hold during that period.

INSTITUTIONAL OXYMORON

The PRI adopted its present name in 1946 under the regime of President Miguel Alemán. A new generation of leadership with few links to the Revolution had emerged; generals and revolutionary figures had largely left the government.

The Revolution had become "institutional," reflected in the party's new name, which PRI Deputy Ríos Camarena called "antithetical."

"It represented the institutionalism that emerged from the Revolution," he said.

The economy flourished and industrial activity boomed in the subsequent decades under a scheme of import substitutions. PRI presidents would expand the scope of some of the nation's most iconic public institutions - the IMSS, the public education system and a military firmly under civilian control, for instance - and exert heavy influence over institutions developed in the private sector.

Government influence over many facets of day-to-day life became even more entrenched. Newspapers bought newsprint from a government-owned supplier, while vendors belonged to unions that staunchly backed the PRI. Campesinos purchased seed and fertilizer from state-run outfits and sold their crops to government buyers. The government also ran the telephone company, railroads and post office.

Opposition parties and rebel movements were kept firmly in check. The federal government violently suppressed a railroad strike in the 1950s, while the Army hunted down rebels in southern Mexico. Students protesting in Mexico City were shot dead in the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre.

For some, earning a livelihood also depended on backing the PRI. Newspapers that bucked the PRI line would suddenly find themselves without newsprint or find vendors unwilling to sell their papers. Campesinos who needed inputs and credit would find delivery of such necessities dependent on their support for the PRI.

A GRADUAL DECLINE

The PRI was deposed by voters in 2000, but many political observers say the origins of its downfall began in the 1960s.

Some analysts and historians attribute the party's decline to changing social attitudes that simply passed the PRI by.

"The hierarchical structure of the PRI perfectly matched the culture . the culture of the church and other institutions ... but in the 1960s, the gaps were apparent," said Mexico City pollster Dan Lund. "The world changed . the PRI just didn't keep up."

Others point to recurring economic crises that resulted in peso crises each time. "A catalogue of sins in economic matters fatally wounded [the PRI]," said ITAM political science professor Federico Estévez.

PRI members, too, acknowledge that mistakes were made. Rodríguez, the former party president, declined to offer examples of specific actions on the part of PRI governments, but said that "many things" led to the PRI's downfall, including, "a natural decline." He also cited a lack of unity and the passage of electoral reform measures - by PRI governments.

But he rejected allegations that his party had ever been undemocratic.

"It's said that the PRI was a hegemonic party . and that the opposition parties forced it to implement democracy in this country. This is totally false," Rodríguez said. "[The PRI] was responsible for its own fall."

The National Action Party, or PAN, ousted the PRI from power in 2000.

INTO THE FUTURE

The PRI suffered a rough adjustment to becoming the opposition upon losing the presidency. It also suffered disunity in the subsequent years. PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo ran a distant third in the 2006 election. Some analysts would write the party off on the federal level.

Forecasts of the PRI's demise were premature, however. The party has bounced back on the local level and now leads public opinion surveys for the July midterm elections. With a plunge in the economy and surge in violence attributed to organized crime, some voters are expressing nostalgia for the order - however authoritarian it was - of the PRI years.

"In the PRI times, there were hardly any kidnappings. There weren't narcos going around killing people," said Mexico City taco stand owner Efraín García, who plans on voting PRI. "The PRI had control of all of this."

The current government of the National Action Party, García said, is run by "new people who don't know what they're doing."

PRI members are banking on that kind of public sentiment to recapture power.

"In the PRI . there's a great amount of experience," said Ríos Camarena. "The experience produces maturity and that maturity draws people in times of economic and security crises."

Mexico's drug war turns political

My latest for World Politics Review on how the Mexican government's war on drugs has become a partisan political issue.

At church conference, parties find religion

At church conference, parties find religion

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

CUAUTITLÁN IZCALLI, State of Mexico - National Action Party president Germán Martínez reminisced about a religious upbringing in Quiroga, Michoacán, while addressing an auditorium of Catholic prelates on Wednesday in this municipality on the northwestern fringes of the Mexico City metropolitan area.

Beatriz Paredes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party followed, speaking similarly about her childhood in the state of Tlaxcala, and of fond memories of the annual patron saint festival in the municipality of Huamantla that fetes La Virgen de la Caridad with predawn pilgrimages and streets carpeted with flowers. Democratic Revolution Party president Jesús Ortega, however, skipped the religious pleasantries and nostalgia and cut straight to politics.

The appearance by the trio of senior political leaders at the annual planning session of the Mexican Bishops' Conference - during which they outlined their platforms and fielded questions on the thorny issues of abortion and religious freedom - was not with without precedent; party officials from the PAN, PRI and PRD had met with senior Catholic prelates prior to the 2006 elections.

But the latest encounter - which also included the presidents of three smaller parties - came as the church has been criticized for wading into the public policy debate with pronouncements, running sharp editorials in church-run publications and lobbying political officials.

Some of the church's hierarchy have even urged Catholics to vote against parties that back policies such as liberalized abortion laws and civil union benefits to same-sex partners.

The encounter - and the recent criticism of the church's so-called meddling - come in spite of strict laws in Mexico that forbid preaching politics from the pulpit, a measure that some church officials want scrapped and say violates their freedom of religion.

"There's a church leadership that is convinced that the church should openly intervene in politics," said Ilán Semo, a political historian at the Universidad Iberoamericana. "[They] have a mentality from the 19th century."

In the mid-19th century, the Reform Laws of Benito Juárez removed the church from the political arena. The Constitution of 1917 reinforced the separation of church and state, along with measures such as prohibitions on the church owning property and priests not being able to wear clerical robes in public.

But reforms approved in 1992 softened many of the anti-clerical restrictions. The softening of the restrictions and the advent of the Catholic-friendly PAN, said Semo, emboldened church officials to opine on public policy and advance a political agenda.

That agenda includes discarding a ban on religious organizations owning radio and television stations and the implementation of religious education in public schools - which are constitutionally mandated to provide schooling that is both secular and free of cost.

The church also wants "freedom of religion" enshrined in the Constitution, which currently only guarantees "Freedom of worship."

Church officials deny allegations that they are attempting to steer parishioners toward preferred candidates or have prelates run for political office, the latter being a violation of cannon law.

They also deny any attempt at blurring the separation of church and state.

"The Catholic Church does not want a confessional state," Archbishop Carlos Aguiar of Tlalnepantla, president of the bishops' conference, said after the meeting with the party presidents on Wednesday.

"The church," he said, "will not be for or against any political party . [and] will promote the importance of the electoral process."

PARTISAN TIES?
The PAN's Martínez on Wednesday enthusiastically backed church participation in promoting democratic values and "fighting absenteeism"

"We're a party that for 70 years has said that there should be freedom, not only of worship, not only of the profession of faith, but rather . a broad and full religious liberty," he told reporters.

Martínez's party has long been accused of being too cozy with the church hierarchy. But church observers say that other parties and political leaders also pursue close church relations.

In Jalisco, for example, the PRI threw its support behind a constitutional ban on abortion after a meeting earlier this year between Cardinal Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara and state party president Javier Guízar.

"Cardinal Sandoval himself often says that PRIístas are the ones that visit him the most," said Víctor Ramos Cortés, a religious studies professor at the University of Guadalajara.

HOT BUTTON
Unsurprisingly, the abortion issue surfaced at the bishops' conference meeting this week.

Only the PAN's Martínez declared his party, "Pro-life;" his PRI and PRD counterparts said that they personally favored the decriminalization of abortion - especially in certain circumstances - but added that blanket positions on the issue would fail to work in their parties due to diverse views on the subject and differing regional sensibilities.

Social Democratic Party, or PSD, president Jorge Díaz Cuervo, whose party is running on a platform that includes the decriminalizing abortion in the states, was less diplomatic.

Díaz Cuervo demanded that the church stay on the sidelines and butt out of people's personal lives. (The PSD platform also calls for legalizing drugs and providing expanded rights for gays and other minority groups.) He cited scripture to make his point.

"As a Catholic, It suits me to pay unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's," he said. "As a Mexican, I back the Constitution of 1917 that separates church and state."

His comments were received with a polite, tepid response from the audience. Cardinal Sandoval, for one, did not applaud.

PUBLIC STATEMENT
It remains to been seen what the consequences of the church's interventions into politics will be.

The Interior Secretariat has dismissed several recent complaints over church actions, including one from the PSD regarding a list of "electoral sins" issued by the bishop of Cuernavaca that urged the faithful to vote against any party promoting abortion and gay marriage.

But while government enthusiasm for enforcing laws against church interventions into politics has been minimal, the public has been more enthusiastic in denouncing the blurring of church and state lines.

In Jalisco, a state government donation last year for the construction of a Catholic temple generated such public outrage that the money was returned.

Religious observers say that even though most of the Mexican population is Catholic - and the church ranks as one of the country's most trustworthy institutions - the public draws a line at a certain point when it comes to power.

"People are Catholic ... [but] they don't want priests running the country," Ramos Cortés said.

For PAN, win would restore pride, power

For PAN, win would restore pride, power

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

The National Action Party suffered through a miserable 2008, performing terribly in the five states that held local elections. But that hardly deterred PAN president Germán Martínez from going on the offensive and predicting a reversal of fortune in 2009, when the country holds midterm elections and six governor's offices are up for grabs. The turnaround, he said, would include victory in Nuevo León.

"I don't have the slightest doubt that we're going to recapture Nuevo León," he told reporters in December.

"The PAN is going to return to governing Nuevo León, and this nightmare of a local government that [the state] is suffering through will only be a historical footnote."

On July 5, Nuevo León voters will prove Martínez right or wrong. But the PAN president has repeatedly signaled that his party is betting heavily on taking back the northern state from the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The PAN faces a stern test in Nuevo León and has done itself few favors since Martínez first predicted electoral success.

For weeks, the party has been bickering over candidate nominations for elections in several key municipalities as well as the gubernatorial race. And a slumping economy - which is hurting the governing party in national polls, too - also threatens to dent PAN prospects in Nuevo León.

"They're probably not going to do so well in the [nationwide midterm] elections," said Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at ITAM. "But [PAN] can claim a moral victory if they win back a state."

The PRI captured Nuevo León in 2003 under similar economic circumstances to those today. That year, the centrist party took advantage of a troubled economy and a less-than-powerful rival to claim the governor's office and victory in the federal midterm elections.

But PRI Gov. Natividad González has since drawn underwhelming job performance reviews. He has taken a particular beating for his handling of security issues, said University of Monterrey political science professor Jose Luis Berlanga Santos. And in 2006, the PAN leveraged increasing concerns over rising insecurity in Nuevo León - and PRI divisions over presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo - to claim a majority in the state legislature.

Public opinion surveys showed continuing dissatisfaction with the PRI during the second half of González's administration due to a rash of drug-related killings in 2007 and the state's notoriety for auto theft and bank robbery.

"The governor has been viewed as weak," Berlanga Santos said. "Both [the economy and security] are the main issues, but here, people are definitely worried more about security."

TIGHT RACE

Still, public opinion polls show a narrowing of voter preference over the past six months. A February poll in the newspaper El Norte put the race in a statistical dead heat with 37 percent backing PRI candidate Rodrigo Medina and 35 percent opting for PAN candidate Sen. Fernando Elizondo Barragón. As a result, politicians from both sides have been hesitant to predict victory.

"It's very competitive," Nuevo León PAN Deputy Cristián Castaño told The News. "If the PRI boasts that it's going to win, that's wrong. If the PAN boasts that it's going to win, that's also wrong."

The unveiling of the candidates in February failed to sway public opinion, making it likely that campaign performance and party unity will decide the election.

STAYING UNITED

Unity has been elusive in Nuevo León for the PAN and to a lesser degree, the PRI.

The PAN originally split over the prospect of forming a coalition with the New Alliance party. (No deal was ever reached.)

The national PAN leadership then bypassed the primary election process and tapped Elizondo, a 60-year-old former interim governor, as the one and only candidate.

The three rival candidates for the PAN nomination scorned the process, but fell silent after the announcement.

Some have defended the process, which critics have compared to the old ways of the PRI.

Castaño, for instance, said that the selection process was necessary, in part, due to flaws in the PAN membership list. Analysts, meanwhile, say that the party mostly likely wanted to avoid the possibility of polemic Monterrey Mayor Adalberto Madero winning the nomination.

The PRI, by comparison, experienced less conflict in selecting a candidate. The party opted for Medina after the local PRI leadership brokered a deal. The party, according to PRI Nuevo León Deputy Francisco Rivera Bedoya, also wanted a young candidate. Medina is just 36, but he has already held the No. 2 position in González's administration.

Possibly the only internal PRI spat to go public was a dispute between several unions over the divvying up of candidates for municipal races outside of the Monterrey area.

With the race currently so tight, analysts say that the party that keeps a lid on internal conflict will most likely win. This applies particularly to the PAN, they say.

"The key for the PAN is to make sure that they don't split between now and the election," Weldon said.

PRI dominates in Hidalgo

BY DAVID AGREN
The News

Early returns from the central state of Hidalgo showed voters solidly backing the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Sunday´s municipal elections.

The PRI and its election allies were leading in 50 of the 84 races; seven municipalities had yet to report returns. Notable results included the PRI leading in the capital, Pachuca, and the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, leading in Zimapán, where the leader of a civic group opposed to the construction of a toxic waste dump was running for the left-wing party.

Sunday´s results appeared certain to further cement the PRI´s hold on Hidalgo where it held 35 municipal governments on election day. The party swept all 18 directly elected seats in the state Congress during legislative elections earlier this year and holds the governor´s office.

Chicanery was also rife during the election period. The state Attorney General´s Office reported receiving at least 50 complaints of election-related incidents, including murder, improper police detentions and the enticing of voters with free rides and giveaways.

PAN officials in Pachuca alleged that four out-of-state election observers were detained and roughed up by local police. A Saturday confrontation between the PRI and PRD campaigns in the municipality of La Mi-sión resulted in a police commander being shot dead. Two PRI operatives - brothers of the local PRI candidate - were named as suspects in the shooting by state judicial authorities. Gunfire was also reported in the municipality of Huejutla.

Hidalgo, a small rugged state north of the Mexico City metropolitan area just beyond the State of Mexico, usually opts for the PRI, although it supported the PRD campaign of former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the 2006 election and opposition parties had won a few municipal races over the past decade.

Analysts predicted the PRI would benefit in Sunday´s local elections based on its party unity and its well-oiled patronage machine while its opponents were suffering from disunity and disorganization.