Financial, political, and other scandals continue to dog Mexican politics, since some of them have reached the highest levels of the ruling PRI.

More attention, however, is focused on the upcoming 2000 presidential election.

The PRI will have a different type of candidate. Four men declared their candidacy in the party's first primary held on 7 November. None are technocrats with American business or economics degrees. The primary was won handily by Francisco Labastida Ochoa, had held three cabinet positions and been governor of the state of Sinaloa. The 57 year-old Labastida resigned his job as Minister of the Interior in May, since the new party rules do not allow people currently holding office to run in the primary.

In September, the opposition may have lost any real chance of winning when the PAN's candidate, Vincente Fox, refused a pact that would have run a single PAN-PRD candidate against the PRI. Polls in early October showed Fox winning about a third of the vote and trailing either of the Leading PRIistas. Cardenas of the PRD was running a weak third at about 12%.

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