Mexico: Pena Nieto 'Wins Presidential Race'

 

 

The new face of the party that governed Mexico for seven decades has won the country's presidential election, according to the first official results.

Enrique Pena Nieto, bidding to return the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power, earlier boasted a lead over leftist challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, exit polls showed.
Later an early count by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) showed the 45-year-old had around 38% of the vote against around 31% for Mr Obrador from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Nearly 80 million Mexicans were eligible to cast ballots in Sunday's vote.
Final results are expected later in the week.
Pre-vote surveys showed Mr Pena Nieto heading for a landslide victory in the country of 112 million people.
"My priority will be to battle the poverty in our country at its roots," he told a cheering crowd at his final campaign stop Wednesday in Toluca, just west of Mexico City.
He did not mention the violence plaguing the country, which has left more than 50,000 dead since outgoing President Felipe Calderon deployed the military to crack down on drug cartels in late 2006.
Mr Lopez Obrador from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) had earlier said he could pull off an upset by attracting voters who want to prevent the PRI from returning to power.
For decades synonymous with the Mexican state, the PRI governed through a mix of lavish patronage and selective repression, and by isolating political foes through rigged elections and skewed media coverage.
Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa once dubbed it "the perfect dictatorship."
Mr Lopez Obrador was one of the prominent left-wing PRI members who split with the party after the controversial 1988 election and co-founded the PRD.
The PRI was in power for 71 years until 2000, when Vicente Fox from the conservative National Action Party was elected president. He was followed by Calderon, a fellow PAN member.
Mr Lopez Obrador, often referred to by his initials AMLO, lost the 2006 presidential vote by less than 1%. Outraged at perceived voter fraud, he closed down Mexico City with street protests for more than a month.
His lead in the polls has not been dented by bland performances in the televised presidential debates, a student movement prematurely dubbed the "Mexican Spring" or leaked documents alleging that he paid for years of glowing media coverage.
Even though security is a top concern in Mexico, the candidates have only proposed slight modifications to Calderon's disliked policies.