Fox Quesada, Vicente (1942- )

Mexican populist politician from the centre-right Partido Acción Nacional (PAN; in English the National Action Party), who, in becoming president in December 2000, broke the 71-year hold on power of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; in English the Institutional Revolutionary Party).

He joined PAN in 1987 and was elected to the Mexican Congress a year later, gaining a national profile when he accused President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the PRI of having won the 1988 election through fraud.

Governor of Guanajuato province 1995-98, Fox won the July 2000 presidential election with 43% of the vote. He promised a government of national unity (including former PRI officials in his cabinet) and pro-market reforms to boost economic growth to 7% per annum. He also pledged to drive out government corruption, increase spending on education, reduce the numbers in poverty by a third, devolve more political power to the states, and re-open peace talks with Zapatista rebels in the state of Chiapas.

Fox's cabinet included several business people, former government officials, and left-wing academics, but few politicians. In his first actions as president, Fox sent a bill on indigenous rights to Congress and withdrew soldiers from Chiapas as steps towards trying to settle the Zapatista rebellion.

The son of a rancher from Guanajuato, in northern Mexico, Fox studied business at Harvard University, USA, as a postgraduate. Fluent in English, Fox rose through the ranks of Coca-Cola in Mexico, serving as president 1975-79, before setting up his own business.