Fox loses Mexican mid-term elections

Mexico's ruling party suffered a heavy defeat in Congressional elections last night, leaving President Vicente Fox at the mercy…

Mexico's ruling party suffered a heavy defeat in Congressional elections last night, leaving President Vicente Fox at the mercy of the opposition three years after he swept away decades of one-party rule.

Mr Fox needed to take control of the 500-seat lower house of Congress at the mid-term polls to help him push through liberalizing economic reforms, blocked by the opposition since he came to office in 2000.

But official results showed Fox's National Action Party, or PAN, won only 30.5 per cent of the vote, behind the 34.4 per cent earned by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled for 71 years before Fox toppled it.

Mr Fox took power on a wave of optimism, proclaiming an end to the corruption and inefficiency of the PRI, but he has failed to deliver on promises of strong economic growth.

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A 61-year-old former Coca-Cola executive, Mr Fox vowed late last night to build better relations with Congress after three years of strained dealings with the legislature.

"It is time to intensify the path to agreement and to cooperation. The voters' will is clear," Mr Fox said in a televised address after results were announced.

The president will now have to do deals with opposition lawmakers to win approval for his economic agenda of labor, fiscal and energy reforms.

The PAN will have between 148 and 158 seats in the lower house, compared with between 222 and 227 deputies for the PRI. The country's third political force, the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, was set to almost double its number of seats to between 93 and 100.

The PRI, often criticised for corruption and bureaucracy while in power, was delighted by its gains.

"Today our party has won an important victory. Today we confirm that we are still the number one political force in the country," PRI leader Roberto Madrazo, smiling and relaxed, told a news conference.

Among Mr Fox's disappointments in office so far was his failure to strike a deal with Washington to legalize the millions of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States.

The economy shrank during his first year in office and grew by only 0.9 per cent last year.

Almost 65 million people were eligible to vote in the Congressional elections, the largest number of voters in the Spanish-speaking world. Unofficial figures indicated about 60 per cent of voters abstained.