Disputes threaten to tear apart Mexico’s PRI
As Mexico’s former ruling party sets its sights on regaining power next year, it has found itself plagued by internal struggles that include angry protests by one group that used to give it reliable support.
The nation’s teachers have been throwing eggs and yelling “Liar!” at the party’s top presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo.
The teachers’ union, Mexico’s largest with more than 1.2 million members, was until recently a pillar of Madrazo’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. For decades, it was among several unions delivering sure votes to keep the party in power, often in exchange for cushy perks for union leaders.
This year, however, the union has declared war on Madrazo. Its members have dogged him at campaign events, distributed bumper stickers questioning his honesty and presaged what could be a no-holds-barred campaign to replace President Vicente Fox next July.
More: mercurynews.com
Mexico's PRI set to give Madrazo presidential nod
Roberto Madrazo, the leading figure in Mexico's main opposition party, was set to become its presidential candidate on Thursday as his main rival stepped down after a financial scandal.
A party source said Arturo Montiel, a former state governor, was dropping his bid to become the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before it was ousted in 2000 elections.
The source, a key member of Montiel's campaign team, said he was withdrawing to preserve party unity after a bruising fight with Madrazo and recent corruption allegations
The ever-changing face of campaign politics in Mexico
Once more the unimaginable seems unavoidable in Mexican politics.
Barely two weeks following the start of what looked to be a ho-hum event, Mexican presidential campaigning took another turn in which the 2006 election outcome may again become unpredictable.
The split in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ranks has turned into a mutiny that not only threatens party unity and its 2006 election results, but eventually the party itself. Earlier Roberto Madrazo, the PRI boss and leading presidential hopeful, had fought back a showdown with a group of PRI governors, and he
Mexico’s PRI faces a bitter battle over leadership
A bitter battle for succession is threatening to split Mexico's former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as its governing council meets on Wednesday to vote on a new leader.
The party, which ruled Mexico for 71 years before the victory of Vicente Fox, the president, in 2000, still has more members of Congress and more state governors than any other, and the rupture could possibly affect its chances of regaining the presidency next year.
The next party president will have the power to set the rules for the PRI primary, which could affect Roberto
Grupo Mexico Shuts San Martin Mine as Strike Lingers
Grupo Mexico closed its San Martin zinc mine because of a strike that has halted production since March, signaling labor disputes that have crimped world metal supplies wont end soon.
Its impossible to even hope that this is going to be resolved, spokesman Juan Rebolledo said in a television interview on TV Azteca. Thats why we closed it.
Lost production from San Martin and Grupo Mexicos La Caridad mine helped push copper to record prices on the London Metal Exchange this year, as some analysts forecast 2006 production will lag behind
Mexico's former ruling party stumbles in struggle to find new leader
Mexico's largest party struggled on Wednesday to find a compromise choice for its top leadership post following a bitter falling-out between the two highest-ranking officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The confusion reflected internal disputes within the once-monolithic party, in which current party president Roberto Madrazo appears poised to roll over the competition for the 2006 presidential nomination.
As nearly 1,000 delegates chanted "Unity! Unity!" at the PRI's cavernous Mexico City headquarters, Madrazo clasped hands with Arturo Montiel, the only other major contender for the 2006 nomination, and
Mexicos new Congress could revive stymied reforms
The conservative PAN partys strong showing in Mexicos recent legislative elections could end a deadlock in Congress that stalled tax overhauls and other market-friendly reforms sought by outgoing President Vicente Fox.
The PAN, or National Action Party, won about 41 percent of the seats in Congress in the July 2 elections, taking the No. 1 position in Congress from the long-dominant centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which finished a weak third in the general elections.
Nobody expected before the election for the PAN to be that big in Congress, said Standard and Poors
Leaders of Mexico's PRI feud as presidential election season nears
A year before the presidential election, this nation's oldest, most powerful party headed toward a destructive split, resulting from the bitter enmity between its top leaders -- probable presidential nominee Roberto Madrazo and teachers union leader Elba Esther Gordillo.
Madrazo was to have resigned Tuesday as the Institutional Revolutionary Party's chief to campaign full time in next year's Mexican presidential election, but he delayed his move after the party's leadership council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask him to stay on until early August.
More: sfgate.com
MEXICO CITY — Legislators will vote next week on whether to allow Mexicans living abroad to cast ballots in the 2006 presidential election, after saying Friday that they had split on the issue with less than a week left to approve the bill.
The dispute threatens to again quash the voting rights of an estimated 11 million migrants, most in the U.S., and exposes the long-standing electoral fault lines in a country where one-tenth of the population has emigrated to find work.
The former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, voted Thursday in a lower-house committee to modify
Once-mighty party in Mexico on skids
A secretly recorded telephone conversation and a stumbling presidential campaign have Mexicans asking if the country's long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party finally may be headed to the grave.
All major opinion polls show the party, more commonly known by its Spanish initials PRI, a distant third in July's presidential elections. The same polls show the party losing seats in Congress, where its presence as the largest voting bloc allowed it to remain a power even after Vicente Fox became Mexico's first non-PRI president in 70 years.
Adding to the party's slippage is the recording of a prominent state
PRI Primary Too Close to Call in Mexico
Supporters of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are almost equally divided between two possible presidential nominees, according to a poll by Reforma. 45 per cent of respondents will vote for former Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo in the primary contest, while 44 per cent would back former State of Mexico governor Arturo Montiel.
The PRI ruled Mexico for 71 consecutive years, losing its first presidential election in 2000 with candidate Francisco Labastida. Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) won a six-year term with 42.5 per cent of the vote. In 2000, Labastida was
