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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Voters Go to Polls in State of Colima
 Mexico Herald
| | The PRI and the PAN are battling for control of the state after the last governor died in a plane crash. |
Voters in the southern Pacific coast state of Colima went to the polls Sunday for the third time in less than two years to elect a governor, after the previous winner Gustavo Vázquez, whose first victory was annulled when he died in a plane crash in February.
Vazquez's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was locked in a tight race yet again with President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party (PAN).
Observers worried about a possible low turnout among voters tired of going to the polls, but voting proceeded peacefully.
"There have been incidents that have not affected the voting or the opening of the polling places," said Mario Hernández Ceballos, president of the state electoral institute.
Voters were to choose between PRI candidate Silverio Cavazos Ceballos, who also represented two smaller parties, and PAN candidate Leoncio Morán Sánchez.
Cavazos Ceballos, a state legislator, pledges to continue Vázquez's policies.
Morán Sánchez, a business leader and former mayor of the state capital, depicts himself as challenging entrenched power structures in the state.
State officials said 386,000 voters were registered in Colima, one of Mexico's smallest states.
Vázquez was killed Feb. 24 along with his tourism and finance secretaries and four others, including the two-man crew, when his executive jet crashed in the western state of Michoacan, midway between Colima and the State of Mexico.
The causes of the crash are still under investigation.
Vázquez was sworn into a sixyear term on Dec. 31, 2003, after winning a special Dec. 7 2003 vote.
He had been declared the winner of a July 6, 2003 race, but the Federal Electoral Tribunal annulled the results after concluding that the outgoing governor, Fernando Moreno also a PRI member had interfered in the race.
The local legislature named Arnoldo Ochoa González as interim governor in March with the responsibility of calling new elections to elect a permanent state chief executive.
Ochoa González said Sunday he expected a peaceful election.
"There is nothing that should disturb the atmosphere of calm we have in the state," Ochoa González told local media. |
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