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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2005 
Ex-Fox Aide Vows to Stay in Mexican Race
 Reuters
| | Felipe Calderon has won the first two rounds of voting for Mexico's National Action Party presidential nomination. |
Mexico City - A former Mexican minister seen as President Vicente Fox's favorite to succeed him vowed Monday to stay in the presidential race despite serious setbacks in the ruling party's primaries.
Santiago Creel heavily lost the second round of voting in the National Action Party, or PAN, primaries on Sunday to Felipe Calderon, a former energy minister who took the lead in the opening round of balloting three weeks ago.
Creel, a former interior minister often criticized as a wooden personality, vowed to fight to the end.
"I am convinced I am the one who can win the presidential race. I am sure of that and that is why I am continuing," he told Mexican radio.
While Fox has not said openly who he wants to take over from him, Creel, his one-time close aide, has been considered his favorite.
Creel said that Calderon, popular with PAN party members but less known in the rest of Mexico, would struggle in presidential elections against leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who leads opinion polls for the July 2006 elections.
"That is what is at stake: the presidency, Lopez Obrador," Creel said.
The conservative PAN ended 71 years of one-party rule in 2000 elections, but Creel has been blamed for the government's failure to win economic reforms in Congress.
Calderon won 51 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections in the southeast of the country compared with Creel's 36 percent. Former Environment Minister Alberto Cardenas was far behind in third place.
The three go into a third round of voting in northern and western states and Mexico City on October 23. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the total vote, a national runoff will be held in November between the two top candidates.
Fox is banned by law from running for a second term. |
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