MEXICO CITY – Mexicans have voted for new governors and mayors across a third of the country in an election soured by drug gang murders and intimidation and expected to deliver sweeping gains to the main opposition party.
After yesterday’s polls and with the ruling conservatives dogged by a feeble economy and raging drug violence, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is expected to win most of the 12 gubernatorial polls.
This will mean it could keep many of the nine states it controls and push out rivals in some of the other three.
A big PRI victory could set the stage for a 2012 presidential bid by the party’s rising star, Enrique Pena Nieto, governor of the state of Mexico, next to Mexico city.
With Mexico’s left divided and President Felipe Calderon sinking in opinion polls, the PRI is pushing for a comeback after a 2000 election win by the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, ended its 71-year rule.
Mr Calderon’s popularity has slumped in recent months as the economy limps back from a recession, while an army-led campaign to curb the power of drug cartels has sparked more violence.
More than 26,000 people have been killed during Mr Calderon’s 3½ years in office, mostly traffickers and police but also civilian bystanders. Human heads and mutilated bodies are often dumped in public as gangs fight over turf.
Surging violence, including the murders of two candidates and a string of threats, has blighted the election campaign.
“The way things are going, if I’m alive, then I’ll vote. The situation is very bad,” Ciudad Juarez tour-service driver Felipe Burciaga said.
Drug gangs fighting over routes into the United States have turned Ciudad Juarez, near Texas, into one of the world’s most dangerous cities, with an average of 10 drug-related killings a day in June.
Mexico suffers from endemic corruption in local politics and a number of candidates have been accused by rivals of being on drug cartel payrolls. – (Reuters)