Mexico’s winning party vows change

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.

Party leader Beatriz Paredes credited the PRI’s success to frustration over Mexico’s shrinking economy, which is expected to contract 5.5 percent in 2009.

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 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 demanding payment for working as poll observers in the capital.