MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- The anchor of Mexico's most-watched
                   television news show is off the air this week, prompting speculation he was
                   punished for a report on a mock vote in which an opposition presidential
                   candidate won.

                   Officials for Grupo Televisa, the dominant broadcaster in Mexico, say
                   Guillermo Ortega -- one of the best-known faces in Mexican media and host
                   of the 10:30 p.m. prime-time news on Televisa's ratings leader Channel 2 --
                   is on vacation.

                   "He is simply taking some days of rest," Alberto Ciurana, vice president of
                   programming, told Reuters on Thursday. A clerk who answered the phone
                   in Ortega's office said he was out of the capital and would return Monday.

                   Mexican presidential elections are scheduled for July 2, and the ruling
                   Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in power for more than 70 years,
                   faces its toughest challenge ever.

                   Recent newspaper and private political consultants' polls show PRI
                   candidate Francisco Labastida is losing his strong lead over Vicente Fox of
                   the conservative National Action Party (PAN). Some polls show the two
                   contenders neck-and-neck.

                   On Friday, Guillermo Ortega gave coverage to a mock election at a Mexico
                   City school in which Fox won among the voting students. Reforma
                   newspaper reported that the news item spurred Televisa President
                   Azcarraga Jean to suspend Ortega for a week.

                   On Monday, Ortega was gone, and substitute anchor Abraham
                   Zabludovsky was in his place, with no explanation. Ortega's absence went
                   unexplained until Wednesday, when Azcarraga told reporters he was on
                   vacation.

                   "With this silence, (Televisa) shows a gross disdain to its public and,
                   furthermore, confirms that the proverbial authoritarianism that has oriented its
                   decisions for so may years has not disappeared," said Raul Trejo Delarbre,
                   a columnist for La Cronica newspaper, in a Thursday column.

                   The PRI has traditionally heavily controlled media coverage of elections, but
                   Televisa has made a point in recent years of saying that it has abandoned the
                   old ways and adopted completely impartial election coverage.

                   But some observers say the PRI may have brought pressure on Azcarraga
                   to punish Ortega.

                   "This may be a warning by the government to the television networks to slant
                   their coverage in favor of Labastida," Damian Frasier, an analyst with
                   investment bank Warburg Dillon Read, told Reuters.

                    Copyright 2000 Reuters.