Calderón pact
with sector from
the PRI revealed
MEXICO CITY, July 4.—Sources from the highest
levels of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) have revealed to the daily Universal
that the governors and one sector of the party have
already agreed to a pact with Felipe Calderón, who
considers himself the winner of last Sunday’s
presidential elections, PL reports.
The
informants, whose identity was not published, cited
among the PRI leaders involved in this agreement,
former general secretary Elba Esther Gordillo,
leader of the National Education Workers’ Union (SNTE).
The SNTE forms the base of the New Party Alliance
(PANAL), of which Gordillo is considered to be the
power behind the scenes, and nominated Robert Campa,
former PRI deputy, as its president.
Gordillo is subject to a process of expulsion
from the PRI due to her public rapprochement to
President Vincente Fox. Members have even accused
her of treason after the 2002 establishment of a
party based on the education sector that became
PANAL.
Thus the weakening of the once powerful PRI of
Mexico was one of the most contrasting results in
the hard-fought general election of last Sunday.
The PRI, which governed the nation for the last
70 years of the past century, not only lost the
presidential election with the lowest vote count in
its history, but also fell from first to third power
in both chambers of Congress. With only the
preliminary results in—the definitive ones starting
Wednesday— the PRI, its 17 governors out of 32
states in the nation, and its candidate Robert
Madrazo accepted defeat last night.
