Mexico at the Polls

Mexicans vote today in midterm elections seen as a referendum on President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s economic reforms and his commitment to democratizing the nation. Some facts about the voting:

AT STAKE: All 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, and half the 64 Senate seats. Of the deputies, 300 are directly elected and 200 seats are allotted according to the percentage of votes for each party. Governors will be elected in six states: Campeche, Colima, Guanajuato, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi and Sonora. Voters in Mexico City and other areas will elect local officials. There are no incumbents. Mexican law forbids reelection.

PARTIES: Ten parties are registered, but only the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has governed Mexico since the party’s creation in 1929, has candidates in almost every race. The main opposition parties are the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).

MAKEUP OF CONGRESS: The PRI holds 261 seats in the current Chamber of Deputies to 239 for the opposition. The PRI has 60 Senate seats and the Revolutionary Democratic Party the other four. Baja California is the only one of Mexico’s 31 states that has an opposition governor. No election is scheduled there.

ISSUES: The fairness of the elections has dominated debate. Government officials, and the PRI, insist new voting rules will make these elections fairer and more democratic than past votes marred by violence and fraud. Opposition parties claim the government is merely more sophisticated about rigging elections.

PROJECTED RESULTS: Most polls indicate the PRI, aided by Salinas’ popularity, will regain some of the ground it lost in 1988, though it may not retrieve a two-thirds majority. The PRD is believed to have a good chance in the Mexico City Senate race. The PAN is running strongly in the Guanajuato governor’s race, and a three-party coalition behind a noted local political figure is contesting the governorship in San Luis Potosi.

SOURCE: Associated Press