Preliminary official results published yesterday pointed to a landslide victory for an opposition candidate, Senator Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia, in Sunday's elections for governor of Chiapas state in south-east Mexico.
Senator Salazar led an eight-party alliance against the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), securing 55 per cent of votes, finishing well ahead of the PRI candidate, Mr Sami David, who won 42 per cent of preferences, with half the votes counted.
"The people voted and sent a clear message. They want our state to begin a new era of peace and reconciliation," said independent Senator Salazar, a 45-year-old lawyer and former PRI loyalist.
Senator Salazar was a member of a multi-party legislative commission, COCOPA, which facilitated a rebel-government peace accord signed in February 1996.
His criticism of government backtracking over the peace accord led to his expulsion from the PRI, but he soon found allies across the political spectrum.
He is unusual in that he is an evangelical Protestant who enjoys the trust of the recently retired pro-indigenous Catholic bishop, Dr Samuel Ruiz.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army, (EZLN) launched an armed indigenous uprising in January 1994, demanding land and freedom. The rebels signed a peace accord with government negotiators at San Andres in February 1996, but President Ernesto Zedillo refused to implement the agreement.
The election campaign was marked by ruling party violence, as dozens of families were displaced from communities sympathetic to the Zapatistas.
The Zapatista leadership remained silent on the electoral contest, leaving supporters free to vote for Mr Salazar, who pledged to demilitarise the state, where 70,000 Mexican army troops are accused of keeping indigenous communities under a virtual state of siege.
However, Mr Salazar must also negotiate access to villages controlled by the PRI, where internal bickering led to violent confrontation in the village of Chimilalacan last Friday, leaving 14 dead, 100 injured and 200 arrested.
Mexico's president-elect, Mr Vicente Fox, elected last month, welcomed the result. He called on all of the protagonists to "assume their historic responsibility" to achieve a lasting peace.
"It is unacceptable that so many of our compatriots have suffered exploitation, inequality and extreme poverty for several centuries," said Mr Fox, who pledged to implement the San Andres peace accord on his first day in office. That accord would give Zapatista communities the right to self-rule within the Mexican state.
The election of Mr Fox last month to the presidency of Mexico seemed to give many voters the courage to challenge PRI rule.
The elections passed off peacefully, apart from a handful of minor incidents, while abstentionism was 10 per cent higher than in last month's presidential race.
"We don't accept the validity of any result announced before the final vote is counted," said the PRI candidate, Mr David, who said he would wait until final results were announced tomorrow.
The PRI blamed increased abstentionism on the "presence of unknown people at the ballots, inhibiting voters", a thinly-veiled criticism of national and international observers who monitored the poll. In previous elections the PRI counted on up to 100 per cent of votes in rural Chiapan villages, a practice made more difficult on this occasion by the presence of outside observers.
In the run-up to election day, however, PRI officials handed out agricultural credits and other grants, advising citizens that a vote for their candidate would guarantee the flow of funds to the region.