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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
PRI Wins Special Election
 Wire services
| | PRI supporters celebrate the victory of their candidate Silverio Cavazos in the capital city of Colima state (Photo: AP) |
A candidate from the political party of a Mexican governor who died earlier this year in a plane crash was declared the winner Monday of a special election to replace him.
Silverio Cavazos Ceballos, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, had 51.5 percent of the vote following Sunday's contest in Western Colima state, compared to 47.6 percent for rival candidate Leoncio Morán Sánchez, of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, with 99.6 percent of the vote counted, according to results from Colima's state electoral institute.
The previous governor, PRI member Gustavo Vázquez, was killed on 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 Mexico state.
The cause of the crash was under investigation.
Vázquez was sworn into a six-year term on Dec. 31, 2003, after winning a special vote earlier in the month. He had been declared the winner of the regular election in July 2003, 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 PRI ruled Mexico for 71 years until defeated by Fox in 2000.
Observers worried about a possible low turnout among voters tired of going to the polls. Ultimately, about 55 percent of the 386,000 registered voters cast a ballot in Colima, one of Mexico's smallest states.
Despite disagreements between the two parties that have led to electoral complaints being filed in the past, Mario Hernández Ceballos, president of the state electoral institute, said Sunday that only minor incidents occurred that did not affect the voting.
Cavazos Ceballos, a state legislator, ran on a pledge to continue Vázquez's policies.
Morán Sánchez, a business leader and former mayor of the state capital, depicted himself as challenging entrenched power structures in the state.
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. |
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