Mexico’s Ruling Party Picks New National President First Woman To Head Pri Replaced After 8 Months

Its power waning and image fading, Mexico’s long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party replaced its national president Saturday, ending an eight-month term that included the party’s worst election defeats in 66 years of continuous rule.

Maria de los Angeles Moreno, the first woman to lead the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, during its six decades in power, announced she was stepping aside at an emotional party convention in Mexico City. Delegates immediately elected Mexico’s labor secretary, Santiago Onate, as her replacement.

“The party needs a change of attitudes … a new stage of electoral competition … a new leadership that has not been subjected to the systematic wearing down that has characterized my leadership,” De los Angeles Moreno declared in her resignation speech, her voice cracking.

The announcement came after an hour of speeches by party colleagues who praised her performance since taking over the party leadership last Dec. 3. But her departure was seen as a major victory for party reformers and internal dissidents, who asserted that she lacked leadership, force and vision.

In recent weeks, even conservative party stalwarts voiced dissatisfaction with her, particularly after the PRI’s latest defeat in state elections in Baja California on Aug. 7. The party also suffered defeats to the opposition National Action Party this year in the states of Jalisco and Guanajuato.

Party leaders took pains Saturday to separate De los Angeles Moreno from the recent setbacks. Most blamed them on Mexico’s continuing economic crisis - soaring inflation and unemployment that voters have blamed on the party as a whole. President Ernesto Zedillo’s vow to separate the PRI from the government for the first time since 1929 - barring it from using state funds and power during local elections - also contributed to this year’s defeats.

But party leaders privately conceded that Saturday’s move was aimed at strengthening the party’s leadership at a time when its dignity and future are at stake.

Underscoring the increasing vulnerability of the party and its leaders - and Mexico’s general state of lawlessness - the PRI’s hard-line governor of the southern state of Tabasco reported that he was kidnapped, beaten and threatened with death while being held for seven hours by armed men as he made his way Friday to the party convention.

A shaken Gov. Roberto Madrazo Pintado later told reporters he doubted that the attack just south of Mexico City was politically motivated. But speculation in the capital and in Tabasco on who ordered the attack focused on everyone from the political opposition to factions within the PRI. The state’s populist opposition leader, Manuel Lopez Obrador, even linked the attack to Saturday’s change of party presidents.

“The alleged kidnapping must be related to the internal battle in the PRI to replace its national leadership,” he said.