CAPED wrestlers, clowns and three human heads in plastic bags: with only one day to go before Mexico takes its first plunge into fully fledged democracy, the election campaigns have reached their climax.

The outcome of the presidential race is neck and neck in a country racked by insecurity and economic strife and riven by vast ideological differences between the two leading candidates.

About 70 million Mexicans are eligible to choose tomorrow between a man described by critics as a self-appointed “messiah of the poor” and a technocrat determined to drag Mexico into the global economy.

With security an important issue in a country in which six million crimes have been perpetrated in the past five years — only 2 per cent of which have been resolved — voters were disturbed by reports that three human heads had been found outside government offices in the Pacific resort of Acapulco, accompanied by a taunting note from a suspected drugs cartel to the aut horities. It was the latest in a spate of beheadings of police by traffickers.

The country took its first steps in democracy in 2000, when Vicente Fox, now the outgoing conservative President, ended seven decades of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Señor Fox’s party successor, Felipe Calderón, a former energy minister who was educated at Harvard, is neck and neck with the leftwinger Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The self-styled champion of the poor has promised a vast public-spending programme to create jobs and revitalise a crumbling infrastructure. Critics fear that he could plunge Mexico in to huge debt.

Campaigning ended on Wednesday. Most of the final polls suggested that the candidates were level, although previous surveys had indicated that Señor López Obrador was edging ahead. The campaign has been vicious, with Señor Calderón’s PAN party waging a mud-slinging campaign.

Señor López Obrador wound up a tour with a gathering in Mexico City. He has been accompanied by a caped wrestler nicknamed the Ray of Hope Man, based on a left-wing former mayor of Mexico City. Señor Calderón enlivened his rallies with clowns and female dancers with his name on their backsides.

CALDERÓN

Would seek closer ties with US, presenting Mexico as a bridge between North and South America

Wants to develop the tourist industry to reactivate the economy

Promises to cut red tape to encourage more Mexicans to start new businesses

OBRADOR

Promises to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, reversing clause allowing free import of US corn and beans in 2008 which, he says, could devastate Mexican farmers

Thinks that the best foreign policy is to stay at home and avoid meddling in other nations’ affairs

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