{"id":15761,"date":"2012-07-02T09:47:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T14:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15761"},"modified":"2012-07-02T09:53:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T14:53:52","slug":"meet-the-new-boss-of-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/07\/02\/meet-the-new-boss-of-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the new boss … of Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

After more than a decade in opposition, Mexico’s equivalent of the Natural Governing Party*<\/a> has returned to power:<\/p>\n

Mexico\u2019s old rulers claimed victory in a presidential election on Sunday, ending 12 years in opposition after a campaign dominated by a sputtering economy and rampant drug violence.<\/p>\n

After pledging to restore order and ramp up economic growth, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had a clear lead over his rivals in exit polls and a \u201cquick count\u201d conducted by electoral authorities.<\/p>\n

Although his main rival said it was too early to concede defeat, the 45-year-old Pena Nieto delivered a late-night victory speech to cheering supporters, and a senior electoral official said the PRI candidate\u2019s lead was \u201cirreversible\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMexicans have given our party another chance. We are going to honor it with results,\u201d a visibly moved Pena Nieto told followers packed inside the PRI headquarters in Mexico City.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* For non-Canadians, the joke about the “Natural Governing Party” is that the Liberal Party of Canada had been effectively the permanent government in Canada for most of the 20th century, with only a few isolated interruptions by the Progressive Conservatives (aka the Forward-Backward party).<\/p>\n

Update<\/b>: The Economist<\/em><\/a> has more:<\/p>\n

The return of the PRI is not welcomed by everyone. The party ran Mexico for seven uninterrupted decades until it was ousted from the presidency in 2000. Back then few expected that the \u201cperfect dictatorship\u201d, as the PRI regime was dubbed by the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, would return to power just 12 years later. But the television-friendly Mr Pe\u00f1a ran a professional campaign and faced weak opposition from the fiery Mr L\u00f3pez Obrador and from Ms V\u00e1zquez, whose poor result is in part a verdict on Mr Calder\u00f3n\u2019s disappointing six-year term in office.<\/p>\n

Many have predicted that a close result would lead to a challenge by Mr L\u00f3pez Obrador, who lost the 2006 election by less than 1% and mounted a months-long blockade of Mexico City\u2019s main thoroughfare to protest that result, which he claimed (with thin evidence) was fraudulent. This year\u2019s race looks to be nothing like as close as that of 2006. But if Monday\u2019s final results show a narrower gap, Mr L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s committed followers could yet take to the streets again.<\/p>\n

Election day provided some ammunition for a challenge, with evidence of cheating by some parties and cock-ups by the electoral authorities\u2014though the scale of both was unclear. There were reports of voters in poor areas being offered upwards of 500 pesos ($38) to hand over their voting cards, which prevented them from casting their votes and perhaps enabled someone else to cast them instead. The PRI featured most often in such reports. A ban on political advertising after the end of the campaign on Wednesday was flouted by the Green Party, a formal ally of the PRI. The Greens illegally sent text-messages and recorded phone calls to many people (including your correspondent) on the day of the election, urging them to vote for their candidates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After more than a decade in opposition, Mexico’s equivalent of the Natural Governing Party* has returned to power: Mexico\u2019s old rulers claimed victory in a presidential election on Sunday, ending 12 years in opposition after a campaign dominated by a sputtering economy and rampant drug violence. After pledging to restore order and ramp up economic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,84,53],"tags":[188,516],"class_list":["post-15761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-government","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-mexico"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-46d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15761"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15763,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15761\/revisions\/15763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}