PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari was proclaimed the winner of the presidential election, with the Ministry of Interior reporting he received 51% of the vote.

[6] Once in office, President Miguel de la Madrid implemented a "severe austerity program" that included cuts to public services and social spending.

[9] The government's "adoption of neoliberal policy and the consolidation [in power] [...] of a group of technocrats" was a result of the debt growth, the deepening economic crisis, and the agreements it made with the IMF to continue receiving loans.

"[10] At the political level, the electoral and constitutional reforms were a government response to pressure from the opposition, "at the same time [they obeyed] the control purposes of the ruling party.

"[8] In this context, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, and Rodolfo González Guevara[13] formed the Democratic Current [es] within the PRI in 1986.

Its establishment was caused by the "abandonment of State intervention in the economy, budget cuts, privatization of companies in the parastatal sector and the contraction of social spending."

[15][19] Following the reforms, article 60 stipulated that the federal government would be in charge of "preparation, development, and monitoring of the electoral processes" and that each "Chamber will qualify the elections of its members and resolve any doubts that may arise about them".

Manuel Bartlett promised that the government would investigate the crime immediately, but it took many years before four Michoacán Police agents were charged with the assassination, with José Franco Villa (the state's attorney general at the time) among the intellectual authors.The Governor of Michoacán at the time of the assassinations, Luis Martínez Villicaña, had been one of Cárdenas fiercest rivals, and had heavily repressed FDN officials and sympathizers in the State.

The PRI denied the request to reprint the electoral ballots, whose printing was handled by the Nation's Graphic Workshops, in order to keep the discussion focused on technical matters.

"[28] Together with other politicians, Cárdenas accepted the nomination at a rally held at his house in front of two thousand people, along with the virtual pre-campaign coordinator Muñoz Ledo and Ignacio Castillo Mena.

Other names mentioned in the media, such as Secretary of Health Guillermo Soberón Acevedo and General Director of the Mexican Social Security Institute Ricardo García Sainz, were also omitted.

[9][30][31] According to the official version, the six names arose from visits throughout the country that de la Vega Domínguez made to meet with party and opinion leaders.

[30] In order to dispel the "negative aspects of their image," the applicants presented themselves as politicians when they were "accused of being technocrats," and those who were less knowledgeable about economics "prayed" to show off their capabilities.

This materialized on 13 December, when at its XIII Congress the PPS nominated it and with this concluded "the stage of gestation of fundamental alliances of the Democratic Current with registered political organizations.

[28][9][41] Until the July 1988 elections, he acted as a "political actor with full personality and precise functions," and the FDN was not a "terminal objective" but rather a "political-historical-electoral instrument at the national and regional level to define basic alliances and convergences.

[42] One of them, Manuel J. Clouthier - also known as Maquío - publicly announced his affiliation to the political party on 16 November 1984 at a rally held by Carlos Castillo Peraza - PAN candidate for the municipal presidency of Mérida.

He and the other PAN gubernatorial candidates initiated a "more dynamic and aggressive style of conducting electoral campaigns" that included defending the vote in the event of fraud.

[46][42] Outside the party, the group led by Clouthier was known as "the barbarians of the north" - a phrase attributed to the PRI leader Fidel Velázquez -; Inside they were pejoratively called the "neopanists.

Castillo thus joined federal deputy Eraclio Zepeda, PSUM head in Chihuahua Antonio Becerra Gaytán, and former leftist candidate for Hidalgo governor José Hernández Delgadillo.

[49][circular reference] For Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo, Pemesista leader, the left had to unite to defeat the PRI and continue with the austerity measures, so efforts to achieve a "unified position" would be maintained.

[53] Castillo eventually withdrew his candidacy in support of a unified Socialist coalition behind Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano of the National Democratic Front a month before the elections of 1988.

Its execution was the responsibility of educational institutions, with assistance from media sources like El Universal and La Jornada, as well as American groups like Gallup, Bendixen, and Law.

Manuel Clouthier also criticized the unfairness of the process and the lack of objectivity in the coverage, leading to the creation of one of his campaign's catchphrases, "Don't watch 24 hours because it hides the truth.

"[64] Democratic Front campaign collaborators Román Gil Heráldez and Francisco Javier Ovando Hernández were assassinated in Mexico City on July 2, four days prior to the elections.

The Front's candidacy suffered irreversible harm when Ovando Hernández was named national coordinator of the plan to obtain electoral data from the polling places and districts.

"[66] At noon, "an unusual influx of voters" was reportedly seen, and in the middle of the afternoon, PAN representatives in Sinaloa, Durango, Guanajuato, and Querétaro "began to complain about irregularities.

In addition to 124 Public Ministry agencies that the Attorney General's Office ordered to remain open for business twenty-four hours a day, there were approximately 2,500 notaries who also had to continue their operations.

[73] Only a few days after the election, the Federal Electoral Commission received reports of damaged official voting packets and paperwork appearing in various parts of the nation.

Years later, the aforementioned Miguel de la Madrid admitted in an autobiography that the infamous "network breakdown" never happened, and that there was not yet any official vote count when the PRI declared Salinas as the winner.

[79] In July 2017, Manuel Bartlett, former Secretary of the Interior, declared to the media that electoral fraud had been committed through the manipulation of figures, in addition to the fact that this had been carried out in complicity with the National Action Party to prevent Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas would become president.