By John Ward Anderson
                  Washington Post Foreign Service
                  Thursday, September 30, 1999; Page A17

                  MEXICO CITY, Sept. 29—Polling shows most Mexicans want an up or
                  down vote in next July's presidential election: a decision whether to try
                  something new or continue with the Institutional Revolutionary Party that
                  has governed for the last 70 years.

                  But the choice is not going to be that simple. Because of conflicting
                  agendas and competing egos, the vote is shaping up as a three-man contest
                  that, following a familiar formula, could once again divide the opposition
                  and hand victory to the ruling party, known by its Spanish initials PRI.

                  Negotiations aimed at forging a coalition among eight opposition parties
                  collapsed Tuesday after sputtering for months. The collapse, which was
                  expected, strengthened the chance that Mexico's opposition again will be
                  too divided to defeat the PRI, which has won every presidential race since
                  it was founded in 1929, making it the longest continuously ruling party in
                  the world.

                  "The candidates' egos were the clear winners here," said Joel Estudillo, an
                  analyst at the Mexican Institute for Political Studies, who criticized the
                  failure to forge an alliance as a "clear sign that none of the parties is ready
                  to assume responsibility."

                  On the same day the alliance talks fell apart, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the
                  left-center Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) resigned as mayor of
                  Mexico City to run full-time for president under his party's banner. Rosario
                  Robles, the No. 2 official under Cardenas, was appointed to complete his
                  term, becoming a top contender for mayor in elections next year.

                  Recent surveys show that two-thirds of Mexican voters favor an allied
                  opposition to create a two-man presidential race. But the polls show that a
                  three-man contest slightly favors whoever is the PRI nominee--former
                  Interior Minister Francisco Labastida Ochoa or Tabasco Gov. Roberto
                  Madrazo Pintado--over the next-ranking candidate, Vicente Fox of the
                  center-right National Action Party, known as the PAN. Cardenas places a
                  distant third.

                  Even so, a PRI victory in a three-party election is far from certain. The
                  ruling party is in a bruising, divisive primary battle that some analysts
                  believe threatens to divide it. And in recent months, many alliance
                  proponents have rested their hopes for a united opposition on the
                  prospect--however dim--that one of the two main opposition candidates
                  will be so far behind at the end of the race that he will withdraw and
                  endorse the other.

                  Attempts to forge an opposition coalition finally failed over how to chose
                  its presidential nominee. But the talks have been faltering for months,
                  weighed down by several factors that would have made a common front
                  next to impossible:

                  * Deep political differences divide the PRD, a vaguely leftist party
                  favorable to a strong state role in the economy and devoted to Mexico's
                  strict separation of church and state, from the PAN, many of whose
                  members are traditional Roman Catholics with a business-oriented
                  outlook. It was never clear that even if party leaders could agree to unite,
                  rank and file members would vote for the other party's candidates.

                  * The nearly messianic drive and egos of the two main opposition leaders,
                  Cardenas of the PRD and Fox of the PAN, both of whom have dedicated
                  years to becoming the first non-PRI president in modern Mexican history.

                  * Legal and procedural hurdles that make forging an alliance difficult and
                  unattractive. Under Mexico's electoral law, for instance, opposition parties
                  have to adopt a single platform and agree to one alliance candidate for
                  every contested federal election, including for the legislature. But they
                  could not combine campaign spending limits, giving the ruling party a
                  substantial financial edge.

                  Given those and other challenges, attempts to create an alliance were
                  problematic from the very beginning. The effort was driven chiefly by a
                  small group of elite intellectuals and politicians who saw a coalition as the
                  best, and perhaps only, way to beat the PRI. Despite publicly supporting
                  the concept, it was never clear that Cardenas or Fox truly backed the idea
                  or would support a coalition candidate other than himself.

                  "The two parties can't stand each other," said Soledad Loaeza, an expert
                  on Mexico's political parties at the College of Mexico. "Both candidates
                  have three years in the making. It was almost ridiculous to think that either
                  of them would step down."

                           © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company