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Two Aides of Presidential Candidate in Mexico Slain

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Times Staff Writers

A high-ranking opposition campaign official and his assistant were found slain in Mexico, casting a shadow over Wednesday’s hotly contested presidential election.

The bloodied bodies of Francisco Xavier Ovando and assistant Roman Gil Heraldez, officials in the surging campaign of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a leftist politician challenging Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, were found by police about midnight Saturday. The deaths were announced Monday.

Ovando died instantly from five bullet wounds in the head, Gil from a single shot in the brain, according to police reports published in the press Monday. The bodies were found in Ovando’s car on a downtown Mexico City street.

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Cardenas called the shootings a “political act” and warned that the incident could set off electoral violence. He linked the deaths to efforts by unidentified groups to sabotage his campaign. On one flyer distributed recently in Mexico City, Cardenas is pictured next to a drawing of Karl Marx making a call for communism.

“For us, there is no doubt that the interests behind this apocryphal propaganda and the assassination of our co-workers obey the same reactionary political interests. These assassinations are a provocation to break the public tranquility,” Cardenas said.

The candidate spoke to reporters Monday at the Interior Ministry after he met with Secretary of the Interior Manuel Bartlett Diaz to seek an investigation of the killings. In Mexico, the Interior Ministry oversees matters of domestic security.

In a late-night communique, Bartlett promised a full and speedy investigation.

He said the government will “dedicate its best efforts and people to the identification of those responsible (for the crime) and the application of the corresponding laws.”

The deaths broke what government officials had hoped would be a smooth buildup to the elections.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari, candidate of the PRI, as the ruling party is known, is facing stiff competition from both Cardenas and conservative candidate Manuel J. Clouthier. However, Salinas is the odds-on favorite to win; the PRI has not lost an election in 60 years. PRI officials have predicted that Salinas will get at least 55% of the vote.

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Tensions related to the election have been simmering for weeks. Both Cardenas and Clouthier charged that the government is planning vote fraud to aid Salinas. Each opposition candidate has asked his supporters to keep watch over voting places in case PRI supporters try to stuff the ballot boxes.

Sensitive Documents

Ovando was coordinating the vote vigilance campaign on Cardenas’ behalf and was carrying sensitive electoral documents in his car at the time of the shootings, Cardenas told reporters. Cardenas did not know if the documents are actually missing or are in police custody.

Ovando was a former federal deputy for the ruling party and former head of the PRI for the state of Michoacan, where Cardenas served as a PRI governor until he completed his term two years ago.

A Cardenas campaign spokesman dismissed robbery as a motive for the killings because Ovando’s Rolex watch and wallet with cash were still on the body when it was found. Campaign workers insisted that Ovando had no personal enemies.

“We will demand justice and an explanation of these crimes from the federal government. And we are asking our colleagues not to fall into the trap of provocation in which the darkest and most reactionary sectors of the government who would like to see us fall,” Cardenas said.

Cardenas would not say who he believes these sectors are except to say there are “inside and outside” the government. He claimed that someone had been tailing Ovando for several days. As Cardenas spoke to reporters, about 500 demonstrators outside the Interior Ministry shouted “Ovando fell! The government killed him!”

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Cardenas, whose father, Gen. Lazaro Cardenas, was one of Mexico’s most popular presidents, broke with the ruling party last year to form the National Democratic Front and oppose the PRI in this year’s election. His campaign has benefited from widespread anti-PRI sentiment, garnering broad support from poor Mexicans who are suffering from the country’s six years of economic decline.

In the last days of his run for the presidency, Cardenas drew tens of thousands of supporters to rallies in the countryside. A rally in the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square, attracted more than 200,000 cheering supporters.

Officials of the conservative National Action Party, which is backing Clouthier’s candidacy, reacted cautiously to the shootings. “We do not have any facts to judge whether this is just another crime or whether it really was a political assassination,” said Diego Fernandez, a National Action official.

“As the news spreads, voters could become angry,” said Octavio Moreno, an official of an election watchdog group. “It may not take much to incite them.”

Added Adrian Lajous, a newspaper columnist and expert on the presidency: “The case had better be solved soon. If not, the people will suspect that the government did not want to solve it, and that could mean problems.”

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