With huge signs and car raffles, the PRI prepares to elect a standard-bearer VIDEO CNN's Harris Whitbeck looks at how Mexican party is grappling with change Windows Media 28K 80K

August 2, 1999
Web posted at: 10:44 p.m. EDT (0244 GMT)

By Mexico City Bureau Chief Harris Whitbeck

MEXICO CITY (CNN) -- It's a whole new era for Mexico's voters, asked to support the country's leading political party by buying everything from raffle tickets to denim jackets emblazoned with the party logo.

The unorthodox campaign tactics -- part of an effort to retain Mexico's top job in next year's presidential election -- are as new to the country's political scene as the changes taking place within the party itself.

For the first time in 70 years, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) will hold primaries to elect its presidential standard-bearer. Formerly, the president chose his own successor.

The PRI's candidates say they welcome the change.

"Every habit from the past that would go against a free, transparent election would guarantee our defeat," said Roberto Madrazo, a PRI presidential primary candidate.

The rules of the game have changed in Mexico.

Recent changes in the electoral law have forced political parties to be more open, and the system itself to be more democratic.

"The time has come for power to be returned to the people that deserve it," Francisco Labastida, another PRI presidential primary candidate, said.

The four candidates vying to represent the PRI in the Mexico 2000 elections recite in unison during a campaign rally

Membership unity

The PRI is even trying to make its membership more cohesive.

That sense of unity will be crucial. Not only will the official party be forced to play the political game by an entirely new set of rules, but it will face opposition that, this time around, is determined to win the presidency.

To achieve that, Mexico's two largest opposition parties have forged an unprecedented alliance. Analysts say such a union would give the PRI a run for its money at the ballot boxes in 2000.

The new method of selecting the presidential nominee means uncertainty and anxiety for some. One political watcher equates it to "the law of the jungle."

"We don't know and this is a dangerous uncertainty," political analyst Raymundo Rivapalacio said. "We don't know what kind of actions the most powerful political groups could take against the main contenders in this process of nomination."

For now, the candidates are taking steps considered unorthodox in Mexico to ensure their message gets across to the voters.

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