Mexican Party to End Occupation of 71 Town Halls

MEXICO CITY —  Democratic Revolutionary Party militants Friday said they will abandon 71 of the 76 town halls in the central state of Michoacan that they have occupied for the last six weeks to protest alleged fraud in the July state legislature election.

Instead, the PRD, as the left-of-center party is called, will begin its campaign for the election of 113 municipal presidents, or mayors, that is to be held in Michoacan in December, Sen. Roberto Robles Garnica announced in Michoacan.

“Today, the party leadership decided to end this stage of the struggle for law and democracy to make way for a new stage--the renovation of the municipalities,” Robles Garnica said.

Robles Garnica said, however, that the party continues to demand that the interim governor, Genovevo Figueroa, be removed for electoral fraud.

The PRD, lead by former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, charges that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party stole a majority of the seats in the state legislature. The ruling party, called PRI, officially won 12 of the 18 seats and the PRD won 6 in the direct election. Six other seats are divided among the smaller parties.

The rightist National Action Party backed the PRD in its assertion that the election was fraudulent and called for it to be annulled.

The PRD activists began occupying the town halls in mid-July, after the Michoacan State Electoral College confirmed the official results. On Wednesday, the state Supreme Tribunal of Justice refused to reconsider the case.

Both the electoral college and the tribunal are dominated by the ruling party.

“We never expected that the Supreme Tribunal would act with independence,” Cardenas said after the court’s decision was announced.