Weary Mexico voters head to polls later Sunday to elect Congress

Jul 5, 2009, 0:09 GMT

Mexico City - Seventy-seven million Mexican voters head to the polls later Sunday to elect the lower house of the federal Congress as the country battles violent drug trade and recession.

Amid a generalized disappointment with politics as a whole, voters are to fill 500 seats in the lower house of the federal Congress. The election will also select six state governors, 552 mayors and 434 local legislators, in 11 of Mexico's 32 states.

For Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his centre-right National Action Party (PAN), the elections are considered a rehearsal for the 2012 presidential contest.

Drug trafficking is a major player on Sunday, with drug cartels directly supporting some candidates and other candidates exploiting the bloody fight against the drug cartels to make political gains.

After entering office in 2006, Calderon declared all-out war on the growing violence among the drug cartels, employing the military in the fight and arresting corrupt local police and officials. Drug- related violence claimed 6,290 lives in Mexico in 2008, and the count by June 15 this year was already up to 2,926.

To many voters in Mexico, the drug fight as well as government measures to buoy the economy have gone nowhere, resulting in voter apathy and even an aggressive 'Voto Nulo' movement which encourages voters to go out to vote but turn in a blank ballot to send a message to those in power.

Traditionally, so-called mid-term elections in Mexico draw less than 50 per cent turnout, but this time around, analysts are projecting less than 40 per cent. If another 10 per cent go for the 'Voto Nulo' idea, actual participation could drop to 30 per cent or less.

'People are frustrated with all the parties,' Frank Priess, of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Mexico, told dpa. 'They don't see any difference in the parties, because little will be changed by the election.'

Three years ago, PAN became the largest fraction in the lower house of the Mexican Congress for the first time in its history, and Calderon beat leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador by a very small margin for the presidency.

In that election, the leftist coalition around Lopez Obrador came second, but it is now very divided. The Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), which governed Mexico for 71 years before losing power to PAN in 2000, is currently the third-largest bloc.