Turning Point.

Mexico's upcoming presidential election will determine whether Mexicans want more of the same or dramatic change.

MEXICANS WILL GO TO THE POLLS ON July 2 to elect a president.

The basic question is whether voters will oust the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from the presidency. The PRI regime is the world's oldest one-party state. It has ruled Mexico since 1929 and has grown to control most aspects of Mexican life.

The party was originally formed after the Mexican Revolution to both unify the country and provide for bloodless succession to power. However, its legacy in the last three decades has been world-famous corruption, electoral fraud and economic and environmental disaster.

Mexico, though, has not been immune to the democratic changes sweeping the world over the last 12 years. Opposition parties have grown stronger. Mexicans have become more active, more critical. The PRI no longer controls the country the way it once did. The presidency is its last untouched bastion of power and the nerve center from which it has controlled Mexico.

So July 2, more than just being another election, is Mexico's chance at a profound turning point, says independent sen. Adolfo Aguilar Zinser.

According to Aguilar Zinser, using the ballot to remove the PRI from the presidency would be the most revolutionary thing that has happened in Mexico's history. "Revolutions we've had plenty. Coups we've had plenty. Long-lasting regimes impossible to dislodge we have had plenty," he says. "[But] in the entire history of Mexico, we have never had a regime replaced through an election. Presidents and dictators go either because they are taken from office by revolution or because they appoint their own successor."

Moreover, the presidential election will be the first for the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), Mexico's election supervisory agency, since its independence from PRI control in 1996. The board has overseen a number of state and congressional elections since then and has recognized numerous opposition-party victories. But July 2 will be a test like no other and the count could be close. "How much credibility will the IFE have?" asks Edna Jaime, a researcher at think tank Centro de Investigaci[acute{o}]n para el Desarrollo A.C. (CIDAC) in Mexico City. "Will it be able to prevent a post-election conflict?"

As things stand today, the race is between two candidates: Francisco Labastida, a lifelong politician and bureaucrat, from the PRI, and Vicente Fox, a rancher and former president of Coca-Cola de M[acute{e}]xico, from the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Labastida has led in the polls, but Fox has been slowly coming on. Cuauht[acute{e}]moc C[acute{a}]rdenas, former mayor of Mexico City and now in his third presidential campaign as candidate from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), consistently places a weak and distant third.

'Campaign lite.' Labastida's bland style is in stark contrast to Fox's. While Fox holds six to eight campaign events most days, Labastida holds one or two. Columnists have called Labastida's effort "campaign lite." He has canceled all non-party events, such as speeches at universities, business circles and the like, where he might have to appear in the same forum as Fox.

Still, Labastida has behind him the full energy of the massive PRI electoral machine. "What's Labastida's interest? In not dropping [in the polls]," says Carlos Castillo Peraza, former president of the PAN and now an unaffiliated political columnist. "How does he not drop? By not doing anything."

Meanwhile, this election will he the swan song for C[acute{a}]rdenas, Mexico's best-known politician and son of its best-loved ex-president. C[acute{a}]rdenas energized Mexico's move to democracy by breaking from the PRI and running for president in 1988. He was able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people and his campaign has been described as having a messianic quality. Many Mexicans believe the 1988 election was stolen from C[acute{a}]rdenas by the PRI government.

Today, the 65-year-old C[acute{a}]rdenas is a shell of his former self. Attendance at his rallies is usually counted in the hundreds, only occasionally in the thousands any more. However, his presence in the race, ironically for the man who has fought longest and hardest against the regime, siphons anti-PRI votes away from Fox, thus favoring Labastida.

"His role now is to guarantee PRI victory," says Aguilar Zinser, a former aide who broke with C[acute{a}]rdenas after writing a book critical of the way he ran his 1994 presidential campaign. "If there is a PRI victory, we will owe this to him."

Until recently, C[acute{a}]rdenas has been the glue that held together the disparate coalition of small left-wing groups and disgruntled ex-priistas that formed the PRD. But the party has been weakened by last year's internal election that was canceled due to fraud, as well as a prolonged and highly unpopular student strike at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) that sectors of the party supported and most Mexicans associated with the PRD.

Radical change? So the Mexican election also poses the question: What happens to the PRD? At risk is Mexico's tri-partisan system.

Crucial to the PRD's future is the Mexico City mayor's race, where former PRD President Andr[acute{e}]s Manuel L[acute{o}]pez Obrador appears to be the front-runner. Holding onto Mexico City will be decisive, most observers believe, in whether the party survives July 2 intact.

"[The PRD] has been a vehicle that has taken radical groups into institutional politics," CIDAC's Jaime says. "If the PRD really loses and is weakened, there'll be a very disruptive conflict within the party. Besides that, it won't offer that option to radical groups. So it's very important that the PRD win something. Otherwise, we'll see anti-system groups even more militant and numerous."

Whichever way it goes, the presidential election will probably shape the Mexican political scene for years to come. The possible scenarios: Another six years of PRI rule while opposition parties grow increasingly frustrated--and perhaps radicalized--by being shut out of power; or ousting the PRI and setting about the enormously difficult task of creating a new nation.

Either way, it's a tough and uncertain call. But many observers believe Mexico can no longer wait to change. "If the PRI wins, I think we'll have more of the same: very slow change," CIDAC's Jaime says. "The problem is the world is running. To walk slowly is to be left behind."