By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers –
MEXICO CITY —In a watershed turning point for Mexico, the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party prepared Sunday night to celebrate what a spokesman called the “resounding triumph” of its presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto
Throngs of supporters flocked to the headquarters of the PRI, as the party is known for its Spanish initials, to celebrate the anticipated return to power of a party that kept a monopolistic grip on Mexico for an uninterrupted seven decades.
“Tonight, Enrique Pena Nieto is the next president of … Mexico,” said Luis Videgaray, his campaign manager, citing exit polls that he said showed “a resounding triumph” and an “indisputable” victory by the PRI candidate .
The only exit poll released publicly by mid-evening, from the GEA-ISA polling firm, gave Pena Nieto an 11 percentage point lead over his nearest rival, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Many Mexicans voted in a sour mood over drug-war violence and an economy only recently gaining steam, ready to give a new chance to a party that ruled from 1929 until 2000, casting aside concerns over its autocratic past.
Scattered irregularities were reported at a few of the nation’s 143,000 voting stations, but for the most part the vote appeared calm and orderly.
Pena Nieto, a boyish-faced 45-year-old former governor, faced Lopez Obrador of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party and Gabriel Quadri de la Torre of New Alliance.
In a closely watched race in the capital, exit polls indicated a landslide victory to the Party of the Democratic Revolution’s Miguel Angel Mancera, allowing the party to hang on to Mexico City Hall, which it has controlled for a decade and a half.
Mexicans fought for decades to topple the PRI from its 71-year monopolistic grip on power, eventually ousting the party in 2000.
Some critics say a triumph of the PRI would lurch Mexico backward to its authoritarian past. Supporters say the PRI has learned from its past and won’t rule as it once did, even if some within its ranks do not embrace the change.
The party would face opposition in Congress, a robust media, a largely independent Supreme Court and strengthened civil society groups that employ social media tools aggressively.
“Mexico is more globalized that it was 12 years ago. That means a party can’t do the same things it did 12 years ago,” Juan Rafael Aguilar, an unemployed business administrator, said after voting in the capital’s Magdalena Contreras district.
In a sign of the forces that will keep an eye on the PRI, when the PRI’s president, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, entered a polling station and cut in line, chants and shouts of “corrupto!” rang in the air from angry voters. A witness shot the scene with a cellular telephone and the video quickly splashed around the internet.
Many Mexicans feel frustration at the past 12 years of rule by the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which failed to introduce wholesale reforms of a PRI-designed political system.
“At the end, the lasting impression is of enormous wasted opportunity,” Jorge Zepeda Patterson, a political scientist and columnist, wrote Sunday in El Universal newspaper.
The United States shares a nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico, and relations are key in areas such as trade, energy, homeland security and migration. Mexico is the third largest U.S. trading partner (after China and Canada) and also a vital source of crude oil. Six million U.S. jobs are believed to depend on trade with Mexico. Criminal gangs in Mexico increasingly have tentacles that reach into U.S. cities.
Under President Felipe Calderon, the party brought U.S.-Mexico security cooperation to unprecedented levels. But while deploying soldiers to the streets, and capturing numerous drug barons, it failed to rein in runaway killings and rampant violence that have left pockets of the country under control of gangsters.
Calderon treats the toll from crime-related killings as a state secret, wary that the bloodletting will stain his legacy. Outside experts say they believe the toll has surpassed 55,000 deaths since late 2006.
In addition to the presidency, Mexico’s 79.4 million voters were also replacing all 128 senators and 500 members of the lower-house Chamber of Deputies, as well as more than 1,400 state and local officials. Experts said the PRI would obtain a relative majority in both houses, and maybe even an absolute majority in one.
Mexicans were also voting for governors of six states and the mayor of Mexico City, a position with powers equal to a governor and widely considered the second-most important political post in the country after the president. City Hall was expected to remain in the hands of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.
The PRI is expected to win an additional three states — Jalisco, Chiapas and Morelos — beyond the 20 states the party already controls.
Mexico does not have a runoff system, and the presidential candidate who won the most votes Sunday will take office Dec. 1 for a six-year term.
