Oh my bad, yea i wasnt paying attention thought we were talking about dsms.
I dont know too much about the Mazda Protege but in a basic
attempt to answer your question you want to stiffen it up as much as possible and lighten the car as much as you feel comfortable with as well.

Front and rear strut bars will help a little but not much,
but a rear sway bar should help your car a lot being that your FWD and
you have a lot of understeer. The rear sway bar should neutralize the car some, I dont recommend upgrading the front sway bar on a car that already understeers.

Stiffer bushings like the energy suspension kit can take any unwanted slop
out of your suspension.

If your current suspension is stock, id spend a little money in some nice coilovers and struts ( research what works best with your car)
But dont slam it on its nuts like the Honda guys do because that will actually make you handle worse. Theres a limit in a good drop.
The struts will play a big role too.

Distributing weight properly throughout the car helps in turning.
( This wont help FWD with traction ) but moving your battery to the trunk takes some of the weight off a nose heavy front end.
I dont know that cars weight balance but im sure that still applies.

You will also definitly want to do something to your camber as that can also affect traction around corners/ acceleration etc. Theres a ingall camber kit for dsm ( on my car ) but i dont know what protege uses.

Then tires will play a big part, I run the Ventus Rs2's 225/50/r16 which are autox tires on FD3S rims which are really light.
For stopping, look into investing in some good pads and braided brake lines. Ive been using the Hawk HPS brake pads for the past yr and they work good, no brake noise yet.

Thats about all I can think of, btw all of that applies to a awd or fwd dsm as well. ( AWD Dsms are still fwd biased.)

Well that was my best shot.