(12 Jul 2005)
1. Wide shot of PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) headquarters
2. Various of PRI President Roberto Madrazo leaving headquarters for party meeting hall
3. Wide shot of interior of meeting hall with party members
4. Wide shot of party members voting by raising their hands
5. Pan of applause
6. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Roberto Madrazo, President of PRI:
"We want to win the presidency of the Republic. Everything else is secondary. The party cannot give up its search for power."
7. Cutaway of media
8. Cutaway of Madrazo at podium
9. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Roberto Madrazo, President of PRI:
"We have been through troubled waters, but the boat is intact, and the party members are on board and the port is in sight. Today the party is a hostage of no-one because we belong to everyone and whole party works for everyone. The unity is tremendous."
10. Various of members shaking hands and applauding
File, February 2001
11. File of Madrazo with Elba Esther Gordillo
STORYLINE:
The feuding factions of Mexico's largest political party decided on Tuesday to hold democratic, open primary elections to choose the candidate who will try to recover the presidency the party lost for the first time in 2000.
The meeting of leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, comes amid a battle for the party's presidential nomination ahead of the July 2006 election.
The date of the primary must still be set, but Senator Dulce Maria Sauri said officials were considering October.
Party president Roberto Madrazo agreed on Tuesday to stay on for a few more weeks until his replacement can take over his post.
But he said he still planned to run for the party's presidential nomination, prompting hundreds of his supporters to stand up and begin chanting his name.
Madrazo said the PRI was the party of the future.
The PRI was created in 1929 to govern Mexico and its president was the country's unquestioned leader until Vicente Fox's victory in 2000.
Yet the PRI holds more governorships and seats in Congress than any other party and remains Mexico's only true nationwide political force.
At least a half-dozen PRI figures are battling for the presidential nomination.
Madrazo, a former Tabasco state governor, is considered the front-runner.
He will be replaced as party president by powerful lawmaker and union leader Elba Esther Gordillo.
Gordillo has been in San Diego, California, for months for unspecified medical treatment.
Many of Madrazo's allies are bitterly hostile toward Gordillo.
But she has refused calls to give up the right to take over the party post.
Before she became Madrazo's rival, Gordillo used her influence to help him win the party leadership, taking for herself the second-in-command post of party Secretary-General.
Critics accuse her of toying with the idea of using the teachers' union as a base to create a separate party and some have accused her of trying to undermine PRI rivals by having teachers work against their gubernatorial campaigns.
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