Drug war, economy weigh on Mexico election

MEXICO CITY – Drug violence, an economic downturn and recent cases of political malfeasance weighed heavily as Mexicans voted Sunday in midterm congressional elections that could decide the future of President Felipe Calderon’s anti-crime and economic policies.

Calderon’s National Action Party hopes its nationwide crackdown on drug cartels will win it a bigger share of the 500-seat lower house of Congress, where it currently holds 206 spots.

But with the economy in its steepest downturn since the 1990s, polls suggest the gains will go to the former longtime ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which now has 106 seats.

“The fundamental problem is the lack of opportunities, jobs, education,” said government worker Thelma Flores, 46, as she waited to cast her ballot. “That’s what generates the other things, the criminality and organized crime. It’s because of a lack of opportunities.”

Calderon’s party angered the Institutional Revolutionary Party during the campaign by essentially accusing it of tolerating drug trafficking. If the party and its allies win enough seats to form a majority, they could block Calderon’s efforts to reform police forces and give more police powers to 45,000 soldiers deployed to fight well-armed drug gangs.

Mexico City lawyer Jose Ignacio Ugarte, 47, said he would vote for “anybody but the (National Action Party),” a party he said had led the country to something approaching “a state of war.”

The vote for 565 mayors and six governorships – including the northern border states of Nuevo Leon and Sonora – is also seen as a referendum on an economy that shrank 8.2 percent in the first quarter and is expected to contract 5.5 percent for the year as a whole.