Narrator:

[foreign language]

In his eight years one political party has held power in Mexico. It's ruled all his parents' lives and all his grandparents lives. But tonight it seems as though the whole town is here to pay tribute to the man they believe can change all that.

Vicente Fox, the man who wants to be the champion of the peasants and Mexico's ruling class alike. He's already given the country something it's hardly ever had before, a campaign where the result is genuinely in doubt.

Vicente Fox:

Every day I wake up in the morning, and the first question I ask myself is, where am I? Question number two, what hell am I doing in politics? Because it's not my vocation, it's not my project in life. I just want to continue to bring change in Mexico. To contribute for Mexico to have a democracy.

(singing)

Narrator:

Libertad Street Mexico City. The cameras are rolling. The struggling families who live here and the street kids have flags to wave. Vicente Fox wants to shore up his city and show his compassion for Mexico's poor, all 40 million of them.

Vicente Fox:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

He's also trying to persuade the people that it really is safe to ditch a regime that's being called Latin America's perfect dictatorship, The Institutional Revolutionary Party the PRI.

Vicente Fox:

We have to profiles of electorate. One is the better educated, the more reflective, those who have wealth and of course they want everything very civilised, no violence, and they don't care too much about whether democracy hits Mexico the second of July of this year, or six years later or 12 years later. And there is the poor, those who suffer, those who are unemployed, who say it has to be today. No more tomorrows. This is the country of tomorrow we need solutions today.

Narrator:

Ironically it's the people Vicente Fox don't care so much about when change hits Mexico who are flocking to him. The urban rich and middle class are being drawn to the former Coca-Cola executives glitzy campaign.

Speaker 3:

[foreign language].

Narrator:

A pitch that's seen a small right of centre opposition party grow into a movement to threaten a regime that's lasted 71 years.

But his support in the city though impressive won't be enough, which is why the candidate and his adopted daughter are heading out of town and into the stronghold of the PRI.

Vicente Fox is going north, promising to end party corruption and to confront those who've thrived under it.

How can Vicente Fox make a difference against the Mexican drug lords where others have failed?

Vicente Fox:

Well because I am clean, I am transparent, I am honest. I have not commitments, no political commitments. The problem of narco traffic has been built up in Mexico through participation of the same authority and same government, at least some people within it.

Narrator:

He's taking on a system of official patronage that has flourished under the PRI, and that in rural Mexico has become a way of life.

Vicente Fox:

It's been a long struggle and fight. Three years of our campaign, we've done our homework. People is waking up, so we will win July the second.

Narrator:

But in fact that isn't what the morning newspaper headlines at his own polling are saying. They're telling him the three is keeping hold of the people who have always been its most loyal followers.

He leads in the cities by 12 points but he trials in the country by 20.

(singing)

Beneath the mountains of [inaudible] a 70 year old peasant is singing me a song he's written for the PRI. It's his tribute, a sign of his loyalty. As long as he's been alive the party has been provider. Don [Pancho] belongs to the union of workers and peasants who follow the PRI.

After all this time the party is virtually indistinguishable from the state.

Don Pancho:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

Don Pancho and his wife have been promised that if they vote for the PRI they'll be given a present.

Don Pancho:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

He says he doesn't like it but he'll accept it anyway.

Don Pancho:

[foreign language]

Vicente Fox:

PRIs profile of voter is the poor and the poor of the poor, is the least educated, and is the eldest, and they account for 37% of vote. Now you can see there that the votes they get, they take them up from ignorance or they take them up for hunger. And many the people in Mexico don't have enough food to eat every day.

[foreign language].

Narrator:

His campaign team is doing what it can, the message pretty simple. Mexicans are told to accept whatever they're offered, but to vote for Fox anyway.

And the candidate who swapped his city suit for a cowboy hat to remind the people that he was born in the country.

Vicente Fox:

I shared the toys with the poor kid's from [inaudible]. Those kids that were friends of mine, today they are still my friends.

Narrator:

Another tactic is simply to stand out. And at 1.9 metres tall in his cowboy boots, Vicente Fox does.

His sometimes erratic campaign style has seen he dubbed the Bronco. Though he cultivates an anti politician image, the 57 year old has invited the cameras home to meet his mother. Taking them on a guided tour of the ranch where he grew up. A devout Catholic he talks of his Jesuit upbringing.

Vicente Fox:

The philosophy of their teaching is that you find your own personal realisation or accomplishment through serving others, through being for others for thy neighbour, and that's again one of my philosophies in life.

Narrator:

Vicente Fox does just about anything he can think of in public that the ruling party candidate wouldn't do. That includes speaking bluntly, and resorting to personal attacks, something else new for Mexico. He likes to call his PRI rival Shorty.

Vicente Fox:

He need a little bench for the debate. I just wanted to make him mad. It's being myself. Sometimes I use dirty words, which we all use. I just wanted to be very citizen like. Speak the very simple language that citizens speak. I think in Mexico we all reject this sophisticated language of politicians, so I try to be myself all the time.

Narrator:

But the ruling party candidate is also exhibiting the common touch. Former interior Minister Francisco Labastida says he represents the new PRI. He's apologised for past corruption, and his government has gone to extravagant lengths to prove that this election will be clean. Spending $3 billion of public money on a new supposedly temper voting system. Even if many people find it all a bit much to believe.

In one of the world's biggest cities life has always been hard. Mexico City is violent and polluted and dirt poor Mexicans are still streaming in from the countryside. Three years ago with the soaring crime rate and protest snarling the streets, the PRI surrendered control of the metropolis to an elected official for the first time. Hundreds of police and other law enforcement agents were arrested on corruption charges.

Rosario Robles:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

A normal day at the office for mayor Rosario Robles, chaos. The crusade to clean up after the PRI is front page news, even if all she's doing today is checking on the progress of a new rail line, and she isn't buying Labastida's new PRI.

Rosario Robles:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

In the city there have been complaints of public servants being coerced into supporting.

Rosario Robles:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

For people who have nothing else, selling a voter ID card is hardly a difficult choice. This is the poorest part of Cuernavaca. A town that's an hours drive out of Mexico City. Hundreds of families eke out an existence along an abandoned railway track. I have been here by Modesto Gonzales, a nurse who's been tending to the children for years. She wants me to meet a former patient, Patty.

Patty's home an abandoned railway carriage has burnt down, she's desperate for money and PRI officials who've been here offering to buy voter ID cards.

Patty:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

She says dozens in the community were approached, but they won't talk to us because everybody fears retaliation.

Patty:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

Modesto has a story of her own. Her son she says was approached by a PRI deputy and promised a scholarship if he made copies of the ID cards of 10 of his friends.

Modesto Gonzale:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

For international monitors here to observe the election, the new PRI is turning out to be not so new after all.

Speaker 9:

That's the way it happens in most of Latin America, voted buying. There's a very narrow grey line between deserving votes and buying them. If you offer a bridge are you buying a vote, or if you offer a T-shirt are buying a vote. If you offer money certainly you are, and that's illegal. But there are some grey areas.

Narrator:

Vicente Fox is becoming an expert on grey areas, he needs to be.

[foreign language]

The citizens group he set up to watch the PRI is delivering another of its regular briefings.

[foreign language]

Things are better than the old days, but the old days weren't so long ago. He says in the presidential race of 1998, the ruling party resorted to stuffing ballot boxes.

Vicente Fox:

At eight o'clock in the morning before the places to vote were open all the boxes were already filled up with votes. We people have to take them out, put them up on the street on a pile and fire them up.

Narrator:

On July 2, his volunteers will be watching more than 100,000 polling booths.

Vicente Fox:

On election day through all these irregularities, immoralities and illegalities they will erode our vote at least by 3 to 5%.

[foreign language]

Narrator:

An ID check to gain admittance to the compound of a PRI patriarch, a party veteran of 50 years. Who says claims of voter cards being bought or copied are lies.

Speaker 10:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

John Louis [inaudible].

Speaker 10:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

We've spoken with other people who tell us that they've been promised food, rations if they vote for the PRI.

Speaker 10:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

But if it happens again and a tight race turns into a narrow victory for the PRI, Vicente Fox isn't the kind of man to back down.

Vicente Fox:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

A shoot from the hip style has brought worldwide attention, and he isn't accustomed to losing.

Vicente Fox:

Being a candidate fighting for democracy you need that kind of a strength. Mandela needed it in South Africa and all these leaders that had to fight a dictatorship or a long term standing government need that kind of courage.

Narrator:

If on July 3, you wake up and you haven't won the election, and you're convinced that fraud of whatever variety has denied you that victory, what will you do?

Vicente Fox:

Whatever the people want. But we will do something about it no doubt. I don't decide in advance. We will decide what to do then.

[foreign language]

Narrator:

His country is nervous, in Mexico power is never surrendered easily. But on this evening in Sonora, there is the unmistakable sense that win or lose time is catching up with the PRI.

Vicente Fox:

[foreign language]

Narrator:

And that Vicente Fox is tantalisingly close to making history. was the sense of.