Mexico Slow Count

The thunderstorm pounding Mexico City was fierce enough to suggest that the ancient Aztec deities were mightily displeased. Nevertheless, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas had no trouble assembling more than 100 journalists last Monday night outside his mother's house, the unofficial headquarters of his quixotic presidential campaign. "The figures that we have received show that I have won," he intoned as lightning sliced ominously through the black sky. "We won. Definitely." At precisely that moment, the house went pitch dark, the electricity knocked out by the storm.

Meteorological omens aside, Cardenas' pronouncement was soon contradicted. Two days later, Mexico's Federal Electoral Commission released the long- delayed final tabulation of the July 6 presidential ballot. As expected, the victor was Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.), with 50.36% of the 19 million votes cast. Cardenas, the leftist opponent, finished with 31.12%, and the challenger on the right, Manuel Clouthier, received 17.07%. Two minor candidates accounted for the rest of the total. Final returns in voting for the Chamber of Deputies gave the P.R.I. 260 of the 500 seats, well short of the two-thirds plurality required to make constitutional changes. In the Senate, Cardenas' forces captured four of the 64 seats, marking the first time ever the P.R.I. has lost even a single race in that chamber.

The P.R.I., which has always taken at least 70% of the presidential vote, turned in its worst performance in 59 years. But opposition candidates were not satisfied with the returns. Last week Clouthier filed criminal charges against the National Registry of Voters, alleging that it had conspired to help steal the elections. Cardenas, meanwhile, staged a protest rally on Saturday in Mexico City, where he had outpolled Salinas by a sizable margin.

P.R.I. officials seemed unconcerned by the unrest. Convinced that time is their ally, they predicted that the various opposition leaders would turn to fighting one another, thus leaving the ruling party in peace. "With each passing day," said Juan Enriquez, a Salinas campaign aide, "the situation becomes more relaxed." So does Salinas. By midweek he had abandoned his command post at party headquarters to begin preparing for his inauguration, scheduled for Dec. 1.