AS Mexicans voted in what are seen as the most significant elections this century, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) seemed certain to lose control of the capital. But the party was fighting to retain its majority in the lower house of the Congress as counting went on early today. Some 52 million people were registered to vote.
Mr Cuauthemoc Cardenas, of the centre-left Democratic Republican Party (PRD), anticipated his success in the contest for mayor of Mexico City with a victory rally last night. Opinion polls had put him 20 points ahead of his two nearest rivals.
Counting continued through the night for the 500-seat lower house, a quarter of the Senate seats and six governorships in the provinces. The PRI risks losing its overwhelming majority in the lower house because of gains by the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the PRD.
The loss of the PRI majority would force President Ernesto Zedillo and his government to seek opposition support for the first time to secure passage of the budget and other legislation.
Three hundred of the 500 seats "are filled by direct election," the rest by proportional representation from regional party lists. The PRI will need to win 167 seats outright and 42 per cent of the votes to retain the majority which it has held since it was founded 68 years ago.
Voting yesterday in the capital and around the country was monitored by 25,000 observers from the main parties and about 350 "visitors" from abroad, mainly the US. These elections have been hailed as the fairest and most transparent in the country's history.
Apart from the three main parties, a number of smaller groupings also stood. These include the Green ecological party and several minor left-wing groups.
The sale and public consumption of alcoholic drink was banned in a capital festooned with electoral banners from midnight on Friday until after the polls closed.
The mysterious death of one of the most wanted drug barons, Amado Carrillo, the so-called "Lord of the Skies", and a sensational kidnapping of a firmer politician's son in a Mexico suburb grabbed headlines here as a rather low-key campaign wound down.
A number of foreign television and radio stations fell foul of the law banning any mention of the results of opinion polls in the week before the election. The pro-government cable company blanked out weekend programmes from the BBC, CNN, Spanish TV and the main US networks which made references to the opinion polls.
President Zedillo, who is recovering from minor surgery on his knee, defended the action to local reporters asking them: "How would you feel if you complied with the law and foreign media - whom we respect and allow total freedom - took advantage of local media outlets to break the law?"
Earlier, he made a final appeal for full participation in the elections held under reforms which he had introduced. He said that these elections would for the first time guarantee not only observance of the law but "justice AFP adds. Mexico's most powerful drug lord, Am ado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juarez cartel, has died following a heart attack, according to reports. However, sceptics believe he faked his death to run his vast drug operation in peace. His cartel in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez ships cocaine and herein into the US.