Mexico conservatives biggest party in new Cong

MEXICO CITY, July 10: 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 yesterday.

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 july 2'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 per cent of seats in the 500-seat lower house of deputies, the IFE electoral authority said late yesterday.

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 per cent.

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 Aug. 31 to rule on Lopez Obrador's fraud allegations and until Sept. 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 per cent, the PRD at 29.69 per cent and the PRI -- which ruled Mexico for most of the last century -- at 28.07 per cent.

REUTERS