Pig heads
dumped outside polling stations and phone threats marred the final hours before
an election in a major Mexican state where voters decide on Sunday whether to
stick with the ruling party, in a dry run for next year's presidential contest.
President
Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is battling to
halt a run of losses. It is squaring off in the State of Mexico, its biggest
regional bastion, with the new party of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,
who leads early opinion polls for the July 2018 presidential race.
In PRI hands
since 1929, the State of Mexico is home to one in eight Mexican voters. If it
falls to Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA, it could
provide him with a springboard to the top job.
"It's a
pivotal election, not just for MORENA, it's a pivotal election for
Mexico," the two-time presidential runner-up said in a recent radio
interview. "Imagine the message that will go out to the world (if MORENA
wins)."
Victory for
the combative Lopez Obrador in 2018 could push Mexico in a more nationalist
direction at a time of heightened tensions with the United States. U.S.
President Donald Trump has riled Mexicans with threats to tear up the North
American Free Trade Agreement and build a border wall to keep out illegal
immigrants.
Prosecutors
are investigating piles of pig heads left on Saturday in several municipalities
in the state that curves round Mexico City, as well as telephone threats and
fake electoral literature warning of attacks.
The threats
were intended to dissuade people from voting, the special prosecutor for
electoral crimes said in a statement. Mexican media showed images of the pig
heads outside MORENA offices, as well as polling stations.
Other images
showed funeral wreaths placed at the homes of local electoral officials. It was
not clear who was behind the threats.
Mariel
Vazquez, 42, a small businessman from Texcoco, at the polling station on the
outskirts of Mexico City where MORENA candidate Delfina Gomez was voting, said
what he called "dirty work, tricks" meant his favored candidate might
not win.
"(But)
if I don't come to vote or if I vote blank, that vote goes to the PRI,"
Vazquez said, declining to say which candidate he voted for. "I don't want
more of the PRI."
HIGH STAKES
The PRI's
standard-bearer for governor, Alfredo del Mazo, voted at a polling station
surrounded by his family in the state capital, Toluca, where he expressed hope
the day would be "a celebration of democracy."
"This
should be a day in which all votes are respected, in which the institutions
conducting the election are respected," he said.
Accusations
of vote-buying and intimidation are common in Mexican elections, especially at
the state and local levels. The tight race in the State of Mexico has made the
stakes higher for the parties.
Opinion
polls show MORENA's Gomez running neck and neck with PRI rival del Mazo in the
region of 16 million people that Pena Nieto himself once governed. Del Mazo is
a distant cousin of the president and the son and grandson of former state
governors.
Pena Nieto's
popularity helped his successor retain the state by a landslide in 2011, but
his 4-1/2 years as president have battered his reputation and hurt the party.
Failing to
end corruption scandals that have long tarnished the PRI, and struggling to
tame brutal gang violence, the president is no longer an electoral asset, while
his home state has become a symbol of all that plagues his administration.
Polls show
most voters in the State of Mexico want a new government but are divided about
who should form it.
The PRI also
defends two other governorships on Sunday, in the states of Nayarit and
Coahuila. Polls show the PRI is trailing well behind the main opposition
candidate in Nayarit, and is in a tight race in Coahuila, where it could be
ousted for the first time. In the violent state of Veracruz, voters choose new
municipal authorities on Sunday.
Under Pena
Nieto, the party's once iron hold on Mexico's states has gradually weakened,
and it now has five fewer governors than when he took office. Going into
Sunday, the PRI and its allies controlled 16 states, or half the regional
governments.
The State of
Mexico is the jewel in the PRI's fading crown, and the party is not giving it
up without a fight.
Opposition
accusations of PRI vote-buying are rife.
"They're
doing what they did in 2011, but on a bigger scale and in greater volume,"
said Alejandro Encinas, a leftist opposition senator who finished second in the
2011 contest for the state.
"The
penetration of money is quite something where there's so much poverty. You have
whole families who sell their vote."
The PRI
rejects the accusations, and some of its voters heaped scorn on Lopez Obrador.
"That
man is crazy with power. Just look at the government of (Venezuelan President
Nicolas) Maduro. Andres Manuel has the same political ideology as him and just
look at what's happening there," said Brenda Hernandez, a 32-year-old
teacher who said she voted for del Mazo.
Polls close
at 6 p.m. (2300 GMT).
REUTERS*
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