By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday , April 16, 2000 ; A31

MEXICO CITY –– As a candidate for the Mexican presidency, Vicente Fox pulls no punches. He has suggested his opponent
has ties to drug traffickers, is less than a macho man and belongs to a party of "bloodsuckers, leeches and black adders."

His opponent, Francisco Labastida Ochoa of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, has taken slightly higher ground. He
has called Fox, from the right-of-center National Action Party (PAN), an "idiot" who substitutes "foul language for ideas."

Welcome to Mexico's new, more open democracy.

For the first time in Mexican history, presidential candidates from opposition parties have the television time and mass public
exposure to launch aggressive, accusatory campaigns. They are taking full advantage of it, and their attacks are transforming
electioneering in a country run for the last 70 years by the PRI, as the party is known by its Spanish initials.

Allegations and innuendo that would have been confined to cantina gossip in past elections now make front page headlines and
top the evening news. Beyond rhetorical grenades lobbed from the campaign stumps, Mexico City's first opposition-appointed
prosecutors are using their powers to launch corruption investigations against members of the ruling party.

"In other elections, the PRI candidate wouldn't stoop to debating with his adversaries because he knew he was going to win,"
said Alberto Aziz Nassif, a political analyst at a Mexico City think tank, the Center for Superior Research and Study in Social
Anthropology. "But now we have a real competition."

As a result, Labastida has been forced to defend himself against accusations that he was "partners with narco-traffickers" when
he was governor of the northern state of Sinaloa, where drug mafias are influential and deeply entrenched. Labastida has denied
the allegations, calling the charges "a low, dirty, rotten blow."

But the ruling party also has had to contend with more than remarks. With the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party
(PRD) in control of the Mexico City government for the first time, the city attorney general has initiated unprecedented
investigations against powerful PRI officials.

City Attorney General Samuel del Villar has accused the PRI tourism minister, Oscar Espinosa, of embezzling $45 million from
city coffers during his tenure as the appointed city administrator before 1997. The charges are particularly damaging to the PRI,
because Espinosa also served as finance chairman for President Ernesto Zedillo's campaign six years ago.

Del Villar also has alleged that one of the nation's two television networks, TV Azteca, was used by former president Carlos
Salinas de Gortari's brother to launder illicit money. The network has denied the charges. The former president's brother, Raul,
is in prison on a murder conviction and corruption charges.

Ruling party officials say the city attorney general is using his position to launch politically motivated investigations. Del Villar has
responded by accusing the party of interfering in some of his highest-profile criminal cases to make his office appear ineffective.

But nothing has created more political buzz in Mexico than the indelicate and often bawdy campaign style adopted by Fox, a
former state governor and Coca-Cola executive whose trademarks are an open-necked shirt, cowboy boots and salad
plate-size belt buckle emblazoned with his name.

"The truth is that Fox is the most entertaining candidate," wrote newspaper columnist Jesus Silva Herzog, son of the PRI
Mexico City mayoral candidate of the same name. "The former Coca-Cola manager understands that electoral politics is now
run by the entertainment industry, and consequently he behaves like an effective comedy actor who prefers to come out with
cream pie on his face rather than be out of the camera frame."

And in a presidential campaign where opposition candidates have had far more access to paid and free television time than ever
before--until recently, opposition candidates were not allowed to buy television spots--TV appearances have become the most
powerful campaign tool.

"Newspapers don't matter, and speeches don't matter--nothing matters but TV," said Jorge Castenada, a political analyst who
is a Fox supporter and author of a recent best-selling book on the Mexican presidency.

Because candidates do not have enough money to buy as much paid television time as they desire, Castenada said, they turn to
the "outrageous, strident, exaggerated statements that get you on TV." Castenada and others noted that the candidates also are
resorting to personal attacks to get attention because their positions on most substantive issues are remarkably similar.

In a nation where machismo is a cliche as well as a badge of honor, Fox has frequently questioned Labastida's manhood.
Mexican newspapers have quoted speeches in which he referred to Labastida as "a transvestite," asked him "not to act like a
sissy" and told him "to be a little man, which he has never been."

"It's unfortunate that the campaigns have gotten to this level," Labastida said in a recent interview on the campaign trail. "I'm not
going to run a campaign of insults, nor am I going to lower myself to insults."

But Labastida has taken some of his own potshots at opposition candidates, including Fox.

In a reference to Fox's signature campaign salute--two fingers raised in a victory sign--Labastida reportedly told a group of
young PRI members, "People who make the sign with their two fingers are idiots, and they're going to lose."

The Labastida campaign quickly attempted to distance the candidate from the remark. A campaign spokesman said the next
day, "Officially, candidate Labastida did not say that."

But on the same day, Fox grabbed one of his huge plastic "V for Victory" signs, bent back the index finger (leaving only the
middle finger upright) and shouted: "Labastida even tried to copy my insults."

Meanwhile, Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, running a distant third as PRD's candidate, has engaged in far less
negative campaigning than the two front-runners. It is widely believed in Mexico that Cardenas won the 1988 presidential
election, but that the PRI used voter fraud to put Salinas in office.

Public opinion polls and the candidates' own focus groups indicate the public is becoming weary of the candidates' personal
attacks. Most public opinion polls now give Labastida an 11- to 15-point lead over Fox.

"That kind of audacious and dirty humor has . . . helped [Fox] distinguish himself from the other candidates," said Cecilia Soto,
a onetime presidential candidate for the Labor Party who now writes a weekly newspaper column. "But he hasn't reached a
level in which people can imagine him in Los Pinos," the Mexican White House.

Correspondent John Ward Anderson and researcher Garance Burke contributed to this report.

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company