Bangla2000 | International News - 3 main parties in Mexican election

Ahead of Sunday's presidential elections, student demonstrators set up cardboard cutouts of soldiers in the Zocalo Plaza in Mexico City Saturday, July 1, 2000, to protest against military intervention in Chiapas.

UNDATED (AP) - Glance at the main political parties in Mexico competing in Sunday's election:

-Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI: Formed by the government in 1929 to maintain and transfer power peacefully, the PRI has held the presidency ever since. It has gradually evolved into a more traditional party as politics has opened to other parties, but it maintains a massive grass-roots network of labor, farm and social organizations. Once famed for fraudulent elections, the party has repeatedly won clean votes in recent years, but opposition parties have made steady gains, and the PRI lost control of Congress in 1997. This year, the party held its first presidential primary, ending the practice of outgoing presidents designating candidates. Its candidate, Francisco Labastida, says he is part of a "New PRI" that has abandoned the fraud of the past.

Its colors are the same as those of the Mexican flag - green, white and red - and for many, the party is almost synonymous with the government.

-National Action Party, or PAN: Its candidate, Vicente Fox, is running in a coalition called the Alliance for Change. Founded in 1939, it is politically and socially conservative. Its power bases are in northern Mexico and in the cities. Despite rampant fraud and pressure against it, the party elected a few congressmen in the 1940s and mayors in the 1950s but was not allowed to win a governorship until 1989. It now governs eight of Mexico's 11 largest cities, has five governorships and is part of a coalition in another.

-Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD: Its candidate, party founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, is running in a coalition called the Alliance for Mexico. Many Mexicans believe he was cheated of the presidency by fraud in 1988, but he finished third in the 1994 election. The party was founded in 1989 around Cardenas' 1988 coalition of breakaway PRI members and old socialist parties. With a

leftist platform, the party's power bases are in poor urban areas and in the rural south. Its greatest victory was Cardenas' 1997 election as Mexico City mayor. It governs in three states and as part of a coalition in another.