Before the House session today, opposition congressmen prayed and lit candles near a Philippine flag.

He emerged into an uncomfortable spotlight last week when a videotape surfaced that apparently showed him offering a $15,000 bribe to an opposition congressman.

A city of 320,000 residents an hour's drive south of Mexico City, Cuernavaca has never in modern times elected an opposition congressman.

The police today detained a rightist leader who they say confessed to stabbing an opposition congressman to death outside his suburban home on Friday.

The opposition congressman who presided over preliminary deliberations was injured when a gunman assaulted him in traffic.

Many offered high-minded slogans like the one proposed by Santiago Creel, an opposition congressman, "Long live understanding among all Mexicans!"

Some opposition congressman had it shown in the basement of the National Assembly.

"Today began the national reconciliation" said an opposition congressman, Fernando Olivera.

"A group of military officers have put the country in a cage," charged an opposition congressman, Rafael Rey.

James Polk once said of an opposition congressman who came to call that, although a Whig, he seemed a gentleman.