Mexico poll set to end 70 years of iron rule

Nearly three-quarters of a century after it took power, Mexico is preparing to reject the political party that has exerted an iron grip on the life of the country for as long as most people can remember.

Nearly three-quarters of a century after it took power, Mexico is preparing to reject the political party that has exerted an iron grip on the life of the country for as long as most people can remember.

Just days before Mexico's presidential election, the race looks set to be the closest and bitterest in the country's history. But polls consistently indicate that the seven-decade rule of the Partido Revolutionario Institutional (PRI) will be broken, an event as historically significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall, according to the main opposition candidate and presidential front-runner, Vicente Fox.

But as the usually jaded Mexican voters sense their ballot papers could actually make a difference and are showing up for campaign rallies in record numbers, complaints of intimidation, vote-buying and coercion by the establishment have been logged across the country, in spite of a new independent electoral commission.

And while Mr Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive who leads the centre-right Alliance for Change, urges the young and disaffected to unplug the old political machine, all the well-oiled mechanisms of the PRI are being brought to bear against its rivals.

Anyone who dares suggest that the PRI will resort to fraud is "crazy or irresponsible", its candidate, Francisco Labastida, told100,000 supporters in Mexico City's main plaza on Sunday.

Mr Fox said that unless the PRI triumphs by a decisive margin of 10 per cent - more than it would be able to manipulate - he will refuse to accept defeat.

The former mayor of Mexico City, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who founded the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, is running third with barely 20 percentage points, while the other candidates each claim twice this support.

Recently Mr Cardenas joined with Mr Fox to denounce the government-run petroleum industry, Pemex, for pressuring civil servants to campaign for the PRI or else lose their jobs. This son of a former president railed against the PRI for its "blatant attempts to blackmail the voters".

Every lamp post is now plastered with some politician's smiling face and competing banners are strung across the skyline like bright laundry.

Government pledges to keep the campaign clean drew smirks last week when the Yucatan governor, a PRI loyalist, doled out more than 1,000 washing machines and packets of detergent to poor housewives in his district.

Government officials in Tabasco state finally released flood disaster payments which had been tied in red tape since last autumn. Newspapers reported that homeowners supporting the PRI were given $600 (£375) while opposition backers made do with $200.Poor citizens who depend on cash payments from social programmes fear that they risk getting cut off unless they actively back the establishment.

"The federal government's social programmes are PRI programmes and we're going to use them to win the presidency," said Manuel Bartlett, a former interior minister, while campaigning for Mr Labastida last month.

Mr Fox, who turns 58 on election day, is appealing to youthful voters, who rarely have bothered to take part in past elections, as well as to women.

Running on an anti-corruption manifesto, the former Guanajuato governor stands 6ft5in in his cowboy boots and claims he has raised new standards in political life. But old-time Mexicans do not quite know how to deal with this brash outsider, who sells his vision of the future with earthy soundbites.