Mexico’s PRI makes comeback, says it has changed

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party promised Monday it has learned from the past and changed its ways, a day after midterm elections made it the largest force in Congress again.

The PRI capitalized on the economic downturn and its nationwide political network to more than double its seats in Congress and win as many as five of the six governorship races at stake in Sunday’s elections.

“The PRI has learned from its errors and has corrected itself,” party leader Beatriz Paredes told local media Monday.

Paredes credited the PRI’s success to frustration over Mexico’s shrinking economy, which is expected to contract 5.5 percent in 2009. “This election is a clear demand to solve the economic crisis,” she said.

With 99 percent of the ballots counted Monday, the PRI was winning about 37 percent of the vote for Congress, to about 28 percent for President Felipe Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN.

The PRI had seemed to be dying after Vicente Fox of the PAN won the presidency in 2000. PRI staff went unpaid, and visitors to its cavernous headquarters scouted party emblems as historical souvenirs.

The party had a reputation for corruption, vote fraud and economic mismanagement during the seven decades it was in power beginning in 1929, and it still may be hard to convince everyone the party has changed.

The party was linked to a number of election-day scuffles, and late Sunday, PRI members emerged from a late-night press conference only to find themselves trapped inside their headquarters by dozens of protesters from their own party.

Blocking exits and beating pots and pans, the protesters demanded payment for working as poll observers in the capital.

Most of the election-day incidents were minor, but in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, 11 people were shot or slashed to death Sunday by unidentified gunmen reportedly wearing federal police uniforms. The victims included a town councilman from the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and his family, who were killed on their way to vote.

State PRD leader Misael Medrano said the killings were linked to the elections. But the PRD governor of Guerrero, Zeferino Torreblanca, said Monday the fact that the killers slashed the throats of five of their victims pointed to drug cartels. “This brutal assassination does not have to do with the electoral process,” Torreblanca said.

The PRD suffered a precipitous drop in Sunday’s elections after almost winning the presidency in 2006. Split by infighting, the party won just 12 percent of the congressional vote, compared to 29 percent three years ago.

The PAN won the governorship of the border state of Sonora — controlled by the PRI until a fire at an ill-equipped day care center killed 48 children in June. It also made slight inroads in Mexico City, long dominated by the PRD.

Vote counts showed that the PRI’s gains included the border state of Nuevo Leon and Queretaro and San Luis Potosi, both formerly governed by Calderon’s.

If the PRI can forge an alliance with smaller parties, it could block Calderon’s initiatives, and on Sunday, the president urged the new Congress to work together.

“The competition is behind us, and now we have to focus our efforts on seeking the agreements the country needs to recover, as soon as possible, economic growth, job creation and public safety,” Calderon said.

PAN national leader German Martinez resigned Monday, saying he was taking responsibility for not achieving the goals he had set for the party.

For the rejuvenated PRI, the question now becomes who emerges as the party’s standard-bearer for 2012 elections.

Early polls favor Mexico state Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto, who has often been featured on the covers of society magazines.

Pena Nieto led the PRI to a near-complete sweep of mayoral races in his state, and boosted the campaigns of many of the PRI gubernatorial candidates elsewhere.

But while Pena Nieto, 42, appears to be a fresh young face, he may also embody some of the party’s old vices.

The elections in his state were marred by some of the most serious allegations of violence; dozens of people were detained after PAN activists claimed they were beaten by PRI supporters in the city of Ecatepec. Mexico state officials claimed it was a scuffle unrelated to the elections.

Associated Press writers Michael E. Miller and Nacha Cattan contributed to this report.