Profile: Francisco Labastida

Francisco Labastida suffered a historic defeat

By BBC News Online's Kate Milner

Former Interior Minister Francisco Labastida, conceding defeat in Mexico's presidential election, predicted that his party, the PRI, would live on to fight another day.

"The citizens made a decision we should all respect. I will set an example," Mr Labastida told supporters.

Mr Labastida had been seen by his supporters as a safe pair of hands, determined to keep the long ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in power.

They had expected him, as a strong supporter of economic liberalisation, to continue Ernesto Zedillo's staunch free market policies.

Francisco Labastida, Institutional Revolutionary Party

Born: August 1942, Los Mochis, Sinaloa

Education: Economics, Mexico City

Experience: Former Interior Minister, Governor of Sinaloa

Image: Solid party candidate, a safe pair of hands

Policies: Free market economics, tackling poverty

He is a soft-spoken economist and lifelong bureaucrat with an unremarkable political record.

He has also been criticised as a dull candidate, lacking in charisma and prone to awkwardness. He has been compared unfavourably with US Vice President Al Gore and is facing a tough challenge from firebrand rival Vicente Fox.

Mr Labastida, 57, has promised more democracy, and pledged to reform the PRI, the world's longest-ruling party, which has faced mounting pressure to modernise and become less authoritarian.

Some would argue the process has already begun. Mr Labastida was widely elected as candidate in the first ever US-style open primary elections in November. Though he was not chosen directly by the president, as was traditional, he is widely seen as the choice of the PRI elite.

He has pledged to tackle poverty and provide jobs, to improve education and crack down on crime.

"What it all boils down to is this: power should be exercised for the benefit of the people, particularly the least well-off," he says.

Drugs war

He has an image as a man who can enforce law and order, although he is not generally credited with significant successes in battling drug trafficking in his home state of Sinaloa.

As governor of the north-western state, he was almost killed in a car bomb attack that was blamed on drug barons.

Critics also say that, as interior minister, he failed to advance peace talks with the pro-Indian Zapatista insurgency in the southern state of Chiapas.

Born in Sinaloa in August 1942, Mr Labastida studied economics at Mexico City's Autonomous University (UNAM.) He entered the public service in 1962 and gradually rose through the ranks to become energy minister in 1982.

He was elected governor of Sinaloa in 1986, and worked for a year as ambassador to Portugal before being named agriculture minister in 1995 and interior minister three years later.