FISTFIGHT FORCES CLOSURE OF MEXICAN CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


    Copyright 1997 by Agence France-Presse
    Thu, 11 Sep 1997 16:00:48 PDT

   MEXICO CITY, Sept 11 (AFP) - A fistfight between center-left
deputies and lawmakers from the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) Thursday forced Mexico's Chamber of Deputies to close.
   About 20 Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and PRI
deputies grappled during a speech on the government's economic
policies by Finance Minister Guillermo Ortiz.
   The fistfight broke out after a PRI deputy demanded the
expulsion of several PRD lawmakers who were waving banners with
slogans against the government's neoliberal economic policies.
   The chamber's president was forced to clear the room.
   The brawl came just 10 days after the swearing-in of a new
Congress on September 1, and highlights the rocky relationship
between the opposition and the PRI.
   The PRI, which has controlled national politics since 1929 but
is now a minority in the lower house, lost its lock on power in a
July 6 midterm vote.
   The four principal opposition parties -- known as the "Group of
Four" -- together won 261 deputies to the PRI's 239, which also
forced the ruling party to cede the presidency of the chamber to its
political foes.

 
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