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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2006 
Mexico Conservatives Biggest Party in New Congress
 Reuters
| | Supporters of Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) protest at the Zocalo Square in Mexico City. Six days after the closest presidential vote ever in the Latin American country, the left continues to reject the figures posted by the Federal Election Institute (IFE), in which Calderon and his ruling National Action Part (PAN) nosed out Lopez Obrador with 236,000 votes out of more than 40 million. (AFP/Alfredo Estrella) |
Mexico's ruling conservative party won enough seats in the July 2 election to be the biggest party in the next Congress, although it will not have an overall majority, final results showed on Sunday.
The result means that if conservative Felipe Calderon is confirmed as winner of the presidency, he will have more clout than President Vicente Fox but will still have to wheel and deal with opposition parties to push through reforms.
Calderon won last Sunday's presidential vote by a hair's breadth, according to a recount, but Mexico is still waiting for a new president to be named after leftist runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the vote was rigged and filed a legal challenge.
Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, won 33.39 percent of seats in the 500-seat lower house of deputies, the IFE electoral authority said late on Sunday.
The left-wing Party for the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, came in second with 28.99 percent of the lower house, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, that is the biggest party in the outgoing Congress came third with 28.21 percent.
The PRI's weight in the current Congress has prevented Fox from pushing through the tax, labor and energy sector reforms that foreign analysts say Mexico needs.
Calderon, a Harvard-educated former lawyer, has already said he would seek alliances and include members of opposition parties in his cabinet to break the stalemate in Congress.
Last week's election split Mexico between those wanting to join a growing leftist camp in Latin America and those wanting to hold on to a conservative government that has kept the economy stable since coming to power in 2000.
The electoral court will have until August 31 to rule on Lopez Obrador's fraud allegations and until September 6 to formally name the new president.
Results for the Senate upper house were similar to those for the lower house, with the PAN at 33.54 percent, the PRD at 29.69 percent and the PRI - which ruled Mexico for most of the last century - at 28.07 percent. |
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