Mexico party picks woman as presidential candidate

After easily winning the National Action Party's primary Sunday night, Josefina Vazquez Mota vowed to unite a party battered by a bloody drug war and help it defeat the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 71 years before being ousted by National Action in 2000.

“I will be the first woman president of Mexico in history,” Vazquez Mota, 51, told cheering supporters.

The party's vote for Vazquez Mota over two other candidates sets the race for Mexico's July 1 presidential election. The two other major parties had already selected their candidates.

Vazquez Mota faces an uphill climb against former Mexico State Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the polls who could return Mexico's PRI to power after a 12-year hiatus.

The leftist Democratic Revolution Party chose Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is making his second run after a razor-thin loss in 2006 to President Felipe Calderon. Mexico limits its presidents to a single six-year term.

The personable, cheerful Vazquez Mota invited party members to help her beat the telegenic and handsome Pena Nieto, who is married to a glamorous telenovela star.

“We begin a new road,” said Vazquez Mota. “A road to defeat the real adversary of Mexico, who embodies authoritarianism and the worst antidemocratic practices; who represents the way back to corruption and offers impunity as a conviction. The adversary is Pena Nieto and his party.”

Vazquez Mota is considered the PRI's strongest challenger, though Mexican voters seem weary of the ruling National Action Party which has governed for 11 years. Delegates are betting that a woman candidate could boost party appeal.

“It injects a certain new note of uncertainty. There's never been a strong female presidential candidate for any other major party before,” said Eric Olson, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. “It adds that historical element and maybe some excitement.”

Others argue that the party, known as the PAN, is tainted by a crackdown on drug cartels that has seen violence soar, stalled reforms and corruption.

“Josefina arrives with a weakened party,” said Soledad Loaeza, a political science professor in Colegio de Mexico who has studied the evolution of the PAN. “The electorate is not willing to see her as an alternative.”

Jose Espina, president of the party's election commission, says Vazquez Mota obtained 55 percent in Sunday's primary, with 89 percent of the polling stations counted. The party's president, Gustavo Madero, later confirmed her nomination.

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