The nation's past presidential election signalled the beginning of a new era as former businessman and political maverick Vicente Fox defeated  the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in a stunning election victory.

On July 2, 2000 Mexicans decided to put an end to the PRI's 71 year-reign by overwhelmingly voting for Fox, of the pro-business National Action Party (PAN).

Since its founding in 1929, the PRI ruled uninterrupted  surrounded by all the trappings of a democracy, namely regularly held local and state elections that were invariably denounced as fraudulent. At the national level, outgoing PRI presidents simply handpicked their successors.

But rampant corruption and a string of recent scandals weakened  its grip on power, including the assassination of top-level party members and economic mismanagement that caused an acute financial crisis in 1995.

Outgoing PRI President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) has been  both praised and pilloried for engineering the clean, competitive elections that  allowed the opposition to win. The PRI's old guard, known here as "the dinosaurs," blames Zedillo for giving up the reins while others, including  international observers, have hailed him as a champion of democracy. He will most likely be remembered in the history books as a key political reformer.

Fox, a former Cola-Cola executive and rancher known for his  pragmatic business sense and signature cowboy boots, takes office December 1, 2000. He  will be taking over a country with age-old problems of poverty and corruption  but a new taste for democracy.