Mexico's former Interior Minister Francisco Labastida was elected the presidential candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on November 7, according to initial results here.

Early results showed that Labastida took 251 districts, and his nearest rival, former Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo took 29 while former Puebla governor Manuel Bartlett and former PRI leader Humberto Roque trailed far behind.

The candidate who wins a majority of the 300 districts will be the PRI candidate in the presidential elections in July next year.

Sunday's election is a milestone in Mexico's political history, dominated for 70 years by the PRI, a party created in 1929 as a convergence of the political, economic and social forces of the country, after the end of the 1910 revolution.

For the first time in the PRI's history, President Ernesto Zedillo virtually relinquished "his right" to "hand-pick" a successor.