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Left wins governorship in violent Mexican state

01 February 2011 04:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Mexico’s left held onto the governor’s seat in the western state of Guerrero, election results showed on Monday, in a small setback for the main opposition party gearing up for a tough presidential race in 2012, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
Drug violence loomed over Guerrero’s election on Sunday where the popular tourist port Acapulco has seen vicious turf wars between rival cartels spiral into daytime shootouts and gruesome beheadings.
Leftist candidate Angel Aguirre, running for the Party of Democratic Revolution, or PRD, won 56 percent of the vote after the bulk of results were counted on Monday, pulling ahead of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
PRI candidate Manuel Anorve won 42.6 percent. Anorve’s campaign was marred by accusations he was on drug gang payrolls -- claims he strongly denied. Voting was spared from the serious outbreaks of violence which have hit other local races.
The PRI ran Mexico for seven decades before being kicked out of power in the 2000 presidential election. But the party maintains a strong presence at the state level, holding more than half of Mexico’s governorships.
Since Guerrero was already controlled by the left, analysts say the loss will only be a minor setback for the PRI, which has majority in the lower house of congress and is aiming for a presidential comeback in two years.
President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party, or PAN, failed to garner support for its own candidate in Guerrero, instead backing the PRD’s Aguirre. The conservative PAN has been making awkward alliances with the left to beat the PRI in several local elections.
The PAN-PRD coalition strategy is being eyed for the key State of Mexico race in July, seen as a litmus test for PRI governor Enrique Pena Nieto, who is favored to run as the party’s 2012 presidential nominee.
Even though official candidates have not been announced, polls show the PRI, and Pena Nieto, with the most support so far in the national race.
Guerrero is one of Mexico’s poorest states, dotted with marijuana and opium plantations hidden in its lush valleys. Almost 3,000 people have died in drug war violence in the sate over the past four years as gangs fight over Acapulco’s port and drug smuggling routes along the coast.
Calderon is under pressure to contain surging drug violence across the country after launching his army-backed crackdown in December 2006. More than 34,000 people have died in drug killings since then, and extortion, kidnapping and crime are worrying business leaders.