Ruling Party’s Zedillo Claims Victory in Mexican Election : Politics: Presidential candidate getting less than 50% of vote in narrowest margin ever for the PRI. Irregularities are reported, but observers detect no widespread fraud.

MEXICO CITY —  Economist Ernesto Zedillo claimed victory Monday, apparently retaining the ruling party’s six-decade hold on the Mexican presidency but without the absolute majority that his predecessors have enjoyed.

His triumph--with almost 48% of the vote in partial returns--was the narrowest ever recorded by a modern candidate of his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

But with 35.59% of the precincts reporting, Zedillo still held a big margin over his major rivals: Diego Fernandez de Cevallos of the National Action Party (PAN), who had 30% of the vote; and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), with 16%.

The PRI also captured a significant lead in Senate elections nationwide and in the two governorships at stake Sunday.

The ruling party’s apparent win came as Mexico recorded a 70% voter turnout, the highest in this nation’s history. A high turnout had been expected to favor opposition parties.

In retrospect, analysts said, the turbulence of the past year--which began with an Indian uprising in the south and other violence, including the assassination of Zedillo’s predecessor, Luis Donaldo Colosio--persuaded voters not to risk a change.

Zedillo--at 42, one of the youngest and least experienced politicians to lead Mexico in this century--campaigned heavily on the issue of security. PRI bumper stickers, for example, proclaimed, “I vote for peace.”

Several Mexican observer groups and international teams indicated that they had detected no widespread fraud in Sunday’s voting, although all reported irregularities in spots across the country.

Still, the elections that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had pledged would be the cleanest in Mexican history generated sporadic protests Monday, particularly by Cardenas supporters, who asserted that there had been massive cheating.

“This is a victory for the PRI of tomorrow,” Zedillo said in a speech early Monday, when the first returns showed him with a comfortable lead. “For the PRI we are building with firm conviction and determination.”

Zedillo’s seeming victory was widely seen as a guarantee that the free-market economic reforms of the past decade will continue for the next six years of his administration.

On Monday, Zedillo promised to work for “economic growth, social advances, the abatement of poverty.” He pledged that his government will spend more on social programs, admitting that the restructuring that has drawn billions of dollars in foreign investment to Mexico has yet to touch many of the country’s poor.

As budget minister, Zedillo--who earned a doctorate in economics at Yale but had never held elected office--was an integral part of the economic team that sold off state-owned companies, slashed government subsidies and negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, solidifying this nation’s commitment to open international markets.

On Monday, Mexican investors and the business community reacted strongly to his declaration of victory, sending stocks soaring 51 points and driving the peso to its strongest position against the dollar in three months.

Economists, brokers and investors were in broad agreement Monday that the orderly elections, whose results also seemed to please stock markets throughout Latin America, will hasten bricks-and-mortar investment in Mexico; there were indications that dollars have already been sprung loose.

Cardenas, who is widely believed to have been cheated of the presidency in 1988, cried fraud again Monday to a gathering of supporters in the capital’s main square.

But the group of 20,000 who cheered him in the historic Zocalo was far smaller than the massive crowds that rallied behind Cardenas six years ago.

“An uncommon fraud has been committed,” Cardenas said with his usual deadpan delivery, urging his supporters to attend another demonstration Saturday after the final, official returns have been announced. “We still do not know the results,” he said. “I will leave the judgment of the outcome to the Mexican people, not to the Congress or the (Federal) Electoral Tribunal.”

Meantime, a potentially explosive showdown was brewing in the southern state of Chiapas, where Cardenas’ party refused to recognize the official results giving victory to the PRI gubernatorial candidate.

Instead, the opposition announced a campaign of civil disobedience and declared the governor-elect to be Amado Avendano, a newspaper editor who narrowly escaped death in a suspicious traffic accident during the campaign.

Chiapas was the site of a guerrilla uprising last January by Indians and peasants calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army.

The rebels had vowed to resume their struggle if the ruling party tried to win the elections fraudulently.

Members of the Democratic Convention--a grouping of about 30 Indian, peasant and social organizations--said that, based on their monitoring of Sunday’s vote, Avendano had won.

They said a sample of 15% of the vote gave Avendano an advantage of 1 percentage point over Eduardo Robledo of the PRI, with areas of Avendano’s strongest support yet to be included.

Official results, however, gave Robledo 49% of the vote to about 31% for Avendano, with just over half the ballots counted.

It was not immediately clear whether the proclamation of Avendano as governor-elect was merely the opposition’s attempt to strengthen its bargaining position with the government. But it was clear that many Chiapans were angry at the way Sunday’s elections were carried out.

That was true especially among Avendano supporters, who complained of numerous irregularities that they said prevented thousands from voting, including a shortage of ballots, omissions of names from voter-registration lists and fraudulent tallies.

But nationwide, Sunday’s election seemed to lack the blatant, widespread cheating that has become a part of Mexican electoral folklore: stolen and stuffed ballot boxes, burned ballots and polling places that never open but still report returns when the polls close.

The most widespread irregularity reported by observers was polling places that opened late.

The most heated protests occurred when special polling places set up for voters in transit ran out of ballots.

And the most serious threat remaining, according to independent analysts, is the possibility of violent confrontations between police and opposition protesters.

Further complicating Sunday’s scenario was the reality that many voters, especially from Indian communities, cast ballots for the first time and were bewildered by the process. Illiteracy is high in many places in Mexico, and many voters relied on relatives--in the more benign cases--or employers and political bosses to tell them how to mark the ballot.

“There might be some unfortunate violence, but I think they’ll weather it,” said one diplomat serving as an election observer. “Credibility hinges on one question: Did the PRI from the top down engineer massive, organized fraud? And I think the answer to that is no.”

Doubts about this election focused on broader questions of fairness, as broached in a somber, early morning speech by Fernandez, the PAN candidate who was running second in early returns.

“This was a profoundly inequitable and deeply unfair process,” he said. “Once again, the National Action Party has confronted the machinery of the state. Once again we have seen with pain and shame the waste of huge resources on the campaign of the ruling party candidate.”

Fernandez then recited the sort of complaints that opposition candidates have lodged throughout the campaign, speaking of:

* Crowds drawn to rallies with the promise of T-shirts and lunch or the threat of losing their union membership.

* Massive expenditures, in the weeks before the election, from government programs to subsidize farmers and alleviate poverty.

* Unbalanced media coverage, particularly from television and radio stations dependent on government licenses to use the airwaves.

Broadcasters did not announce Cardenas’ plans for the rally in the Zocalo here; cable companies that carry U.S. networks blacked out American television coverage of the election, broadly interpreting a Federal Electoral Institute request.

Elsewhere, opposition reaction to the election reflected Fernandez’s charges of unfairness, which were confirmed by several observer groups and international visitors.

Two U.S. groups expressed concern about “the pre-election environment” that favored the ruling party. Still, their overall assessment was positive, stressing that they were struck by “the peaceful and orderly conduct of the polls.”

Some diplomats and analysts said Cardenas supporters may be ignoring an unpleasant reality in insisting that they lost simply because of electoral foul play.

These observers said the elections may be offering a different, clear signal--a defeat for the political left. “Whether you like it or not,” one diplomat said, “the left is being taught a lesson here.”

As for Zedillo, he made a conscious effort Monday to downplay his apparent victory. He made no public appearances after his early speech; senior advisers said that to avoid inflaming the opposition further, Zedillo deliberately spent most of the day closeted in the PRI’s downtown headquarters, thanking party rank and file.

Until late last year, Zedillo was a little-known, seemingly dull Cabinet member, an able economist who helped draft Salinas’ economic strategy and served for a time as education minister, where he was noted for bungling the introduction of new textbooks.

The son of a Mexicali electrician who once worked as a shoeshine boy, Zedillo has an image that is more that of Yale University, which he attended on scholarships, than of the dusty streets of Baja California.

Earlier this year, Zedillo was named coordinator for the presidential campaign of Luis Donaldo Colosio, apparently to help give him political seasoning. Instead, that post pushed him into the presidency.

The March 23 assassination of Colosio left the PRI in shock and with limited prospects for a presidential contender, as Mexican law barred any serving Cabinet member or governor from replacing him as candidate. Salinas, however, employed his unique privilege as Mexico’s president, tapping Zedillo from a limited field to be the PRI presidential candidate.

He began his campaign in Colosio’s shadow. But he gradually emerged as his own man, drawing larger and larger crowds. His infamous wooden speeches and gestures grew animated. He sometimes abandoned his suits for shirt sleeves and even appeared to enjoy mingling with crowds.

As for Fernandez on Monday, he also removed himself from the public eye after his midnight television address.

His senior aides said PAN Chairman Carlos Castillo planned to spend Monday night with party statisticians and analysts, examining official results in detail to determine whether they jibed with their random poll samplings.

The party offered no comment on returns indicating that the PAN was trailing the ruling party in the three states where it has governorships.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in San Cristobal de las Casas contributed to this report.

* RESPONSES IN U.S.: Official comments are cautious; expatriates are divided. A11

* PASSIONS AROUSED: O.C. Latinos react to election results with joy, scorn. A11

* OTHER STORIES, A10-11; D1