Former Mexico ruling party back in power as Pena Nieto triumphs
Source: Agencies |
July 3, 2012, Tuesday
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THE party that ruled Mexico with an iron grip for most of the last century has sailed back into power, promising a government that will be modern, responsible and open to criticism.
Though Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Pena Nieto's margin of victory was clear in the preliminary count from Sunday's election, it was not the mandate the party had anticipated from pre-election polls that had at times shown the youthful, 45-year-old with support of more than half of Mexico's voters.
Instead, he won 38 percent support, about 7 points more than his nearest rival, according to a representative count of the ballots, and he went to work immediately to win over the two-thirds who didn't vote for him, many of whom rejected his claim that he represented a reformed and repentant party.
"We're a new generation. There is no return to the past," Pena Nieto said in his victory speech. "It's time to move on from the country we are to the Mexico we deserve and that we can be ... where every Mexican writes his own success story."
But his top challenger, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, refused to concede, saying he would await a full count and legal review. He won roughly 31 percent of the vote, according to the preliminary count which has a margin of error of 1 percentage point. Lopez Obrador in 2006 paralyzed Mexico City streets with hundreds of thousands of supporters when he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderon.
The PRI for 71 years ruled as a single party known for coercion and corruption, but also for building Mexico's institutions and social services. It was often accused of stealing elections, most infamously the 1988 presidential vote.
The vote on Sunday went smoothly with the usual protests at polling places that ran out of ballots and a few arrests for small cases of alleged bribery or tampering of ballots. Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Party, Mexico's first woman candidate for a major party, conceded almost immediately after the polls closed and exit surveys showed her trailing in third with 26 percent of the vote. Her party, the PAN, unseated the PRI after 71 years in 2000 with the victory of Vicente Fox, who won more than 40 percent of vote, and again with Calderon in 2006, who won by a half percentage point over Lopez Obrador.
Though Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Pena Nieto's margin of victory was clear in the preliminary count from Sunday's election, it was not the mandate the party had anticipated from pre-election polls that had at times shown the youthful, 45-year-old with support of more than half of Mexico's voters.
Instead, he won 38 percent support, about 7 points more than his nearest rival, according to a representative count of the ballots, and he went to work immediately to win over the two-thirds who didn't vote for him, many of whom rejected his claim that he represented a reformed and repentant party.
"We're a new generation. There is no return to the past," Pena Nieto said in his victory speech. "It's time to move on from the country we are to the Mexico we deserve and that we can be ... where every Mexican writes his own success story."
But his top challenger, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, refused to concede, saying he would await a full count and legal review. He won roughly 31 percent of the vote, according to the preliminary count which has a margin of error of 1 percentage point. Lopez Obrador in 2006 paralyzed Mexico City streets with hundreds of thousands of supporters when he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderon.
The PRI for 71 years ruled as a single party known for coercion and corruption, but also for building Mexico's institutions and social services. It was often accused of stealing elections, most infamously the 1988 presidential vote.
The vote on Sunday went smoothly with the usual protests at polling places that ran out of ballots and a few arrests for small cases of alleged bribery or tampering of ballots. Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Party, Mexico's first woman candidate for a major party, conceded almost immediately after the polls closed and exit surveys showed her trailing in third with 26 percent of the vote. Her party, the PAN, unseated the PRI after 71 years in 2000 with the victory of Vicente Fox, who won more than 40 percent of vote, and again with Calderon in 2006, who won by a half percentage point over Lopez Obrador.
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