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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2005 
Leading Presidential Candidates to Suspend Campaigns for the Holidays
 E. Eduardo Castillo - Associated Press
| | A supporter kisses presidential hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Tonaia. (Luis J. Jimenez/Copley) |
Mexico City – Presidential candidates for the country's three main political parties will suspend their campaigns during the Christmas holidays to give potential contenders from two smaller parties a chance to catch up.
Mexico's autonomous Federal Electoral Institute, which ordered the "truce," said the hiatus would give the smaller parties time to nominate candidates and to launch their official campaigns simultaneously with the governing National Action Party and the two main opposition parties, the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Revolution Party.
Campaigns will come to a halt on Sunday and resume on Jan. 19. During the break, candidates will be forbidden from running campaign ads and from holding public rallies.
Mexico will hold elections on July 2, 2006, for president; Congress; Mexico City mayor; three state governors; and state lawmakers and mayors in nine states.
Each of the three larger parties already has nominated its candidates, all of whom have been actively campaigning for months. The two recently created parties, New Alliance and the Social Democrat Alternative, have said they are evaluating the possibility of postulating presidential candidates.
Democratic Revolution candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been leading in voter opinion polls for more than a year, although his numbers have begun to slip a bit in the past several weeks. Meanwhile, previously unknown National Action candidate Felipe Calderon has been gaining support. Institutional Revolutionary candidate Roberto Madrazo is currently in third place in the polls.
Democratic Revolution, known by its Spanish initials as the PRD, has teamed up with both the small Labor Party and the Convergence Party, while the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, recently formed an alliance with the Green Party. National Action, or the PAN, will run alone. |
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