MEXICO CITY (AP) — A former Mexican presidential candidate who has remained a power broker in the ruling party was missing amid signs of violence, the federal Attorney General’s Office said Saturday.
Prosecutors said that the car of the former candidate, Diego Fernández de Cevallos, was found near his ranch in the central state of Querétaro. They said some of his belongings were found inside the car as well as unspecified “signs of violence.”
The Mexican newspaper El Universal reported that federal sources said Mr. Fernández de Cevallos had been kidnapped, but a federal prosecutor’s spokeswoman could not confirm that.
The Querétaro state attorney general, Arsenio Durán, told the radio station Formato 21 that investigators found some of Mr. Fernández de Cevallos’s belongings inside the car and a small pair of scissors with traces of blood on the ground near the car. Relatives told the authorities that no one had contacted them to ask for a ransom.
Mr. Fernández de Cevallos, 69, was the 1994 presidential candidate of the National Action Party that now governs Mexico and he has continued to be an influential figure, as well as one of Mexico’s most successful attorneys.
He emerged from relative obscurity during Mexico’s first televised debate by presidential candidates in 1994, striking a chord with the middle class with his calls to topple the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had held power since 1929.
He finished second to Ernesto Zedillo that year, but his party finally won the presidency six years later when Vicente Fox was elected.