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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
Mexico's Former Ruling Party Chooses New Leader After Internal Struggles
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
| | Party officials announced the appointment of Mariano Palacios, ex-technical secretary of the PRI's National Political Council. |
Mexico City – Mexico's largest party chose a new leader Wednesday to oversee the nomination of its presidential candidate following a bitter falling-out between the two highest-ranking officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
Party officials announced the appointment of Mariano Palacios, ex-technical secretary of the PRI's National Political Council, as their new president after hours of closed-door debate and the resignation of Roberto Madrazo, who stepped down as head of the once-monolithic party to run for the Mexican presidency.
Palacios will oversee internal elections to select the PRI's presidential nominee. He took the position instead of the party's second-in-charge, secretary-general Elba Esther Gordillo, who publicly broke with Madrazo earlier this week after accusing him of trying to bribe her with the party's presidency in exchange for supporting his candidacy.
Gordillo said Madrazo had no respect for democracy, wanted to assure himself of the nomination and was breaking party rules to impose a party leader of his own choosing.
Gordillo, who remains the party's secretary-general for the time being, did not attend the Wednesday leadership meeting. Instead, she filed a complaint with a federal electoral tribunal asking it to protect her political rights. Some of her followers in the national teacher's union have founded a new party.
Before the meetings to determine a new leader began Wednesday, nearly 1,000 delegates chanted "Unity! Unity!" at the PRI's cavernous Mexico City headquarters as Madrazo clasped hands with Arturo Montiel, the only other major PRI contender for the 2006 nomination, and claimed the party was "on the verge of returning" to the presidency it held without interruption from 1929 to 2000.
"Today, we have a clear chance at winning back what we are all interested in, what belongs to us – the presidency," Montiel told the crowd.
In a late-night interview with Mexico's Televisa television network, Palacios noted that he was chosen with the backing of both Madrazo and Montiel and that as party president, he would ensure that the process for nominating a presidential candidate would be "even-handed, open and fair."
But the party's choreographed show of unity Wednesday could not hide the bitter divisions that have forced the PRI to veer away from its normal chain of command.
Madrazo said Gordillo had "questioned the very basis of the PRI," but refused to comment on whether she had any future in the PRI. "Today the party needs unity more than ever," Madrazo said.
Outside the party's headquarters, a group of dissident teachers shouted insults against Gordillo, whose apartment building was also spray-painted with graffiti, insults and death threats earlier this week.
The PRI denied any involvement in the graffiti. But there was no lack of people who, like schoolteacher Felix Moreno Peralta from southern Guerrero state, said they trusted neither Madrazo nor Gordillo.
"We repudiate both of them," Moreno said, as other protesters held up signs reading "Madrazo, Gordillo, the same failure."
The party's tough situation was reflected in a poll published Wednesday that showed Madrazo trailing former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by a wide margin in the 2006 race.
Lopez Obrador, on the center-left of politics, was favored by 37.9 percent of those surveyed by Consulta Mitofsky from Aug. 17 to 21. Madrazo and Santiago Creel of the governing National Action Party were favored by 25 and 20.2 percent respectively. The poll had a margin of error of four percentage points.
The PRI's confusion is so great that its leaders on Tuesday told reporters they had offered the party presidency to Sergio Garcia Ramirez, a justice on the InterAmerican Human Rights Court, before finding out if he wanted the job. He immediately said he didn't.
"Due to his internal responsibilities ... he could not accept the offer that was unanimously made to him," Madrazo said.
Others who had been mentioned for the post include PRI congressional leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who filed a defamation complaint against the New York Times after a 1997 story saying that U.S. government intelligence reports had linked Beltrones – then governor of northern Sonora state – to drug traffickers.
Mexican prosecutors declined to pursue the case. |
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