Salinas confirmed despite protests

Press, 12 September 1988, Page 8

Salinas confirmed despite protests

NZPA-Reuter Mexico City Mexico’s ruling party candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was confirmed President-elect yesterday, two months after hotlydisputed elections said by the Opposition to have been rigged. The 500-seat lower house of congress confirmed his victory by 26385 after Opposition parties walked out in protest against the alleged fraud. Miguel Montes Garcia, president of the Chamber of Deputies, read out the official ruling which gave

Mr Salinas 50.74 per cent of the July 6 votes, the Centre-Left candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, 31.06 per cent and Manuel Clouthier’s National Action Party (P.A.N.) 16.81 per cent. Deputies of the Cardenas Front for National Reconstruction and the pro-Cardenas Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolutionary walked out of the chamber before the vote. The P.A.N., which has called for annulment of the electons, was the only

Opposition party to vote on the confirmation. All the votes favouring Salinas’s confirmation came from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party < (P.R.1.). Mr Salinas, aged 40, a Harvard-educated economist, will take over from Miguel de la Madrid on December 1, continuing a 59-year P.R.I. stranglehold on Mexican politics. The former Planning Minister said in his campaign speeches that he intended to implement political reforms.