Mexico City mayor seeks to unite left after split

Chicago Tribune/Reuters, 9/13/2012

Marcelo Ebrard

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is trying to rally Mexico’s left behind him after rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would break with the established parties following his defeat in July’s presidential election.

In an interview with Reuters, Ebrard said on Thursday he aims to bring the left back together, contrasting himself with Lopez Obrador, who has strong support among the poor and came close to winning the last two elections but alienated centrist voters with his combative style.

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Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto officially declared election winner [video included]

Los Angeles Times, 8/31/2012

Enrique Peña Nieto

Dismissing arguments that recent elections were rife with fraud, Mexico’s electoral tribunal on Friday officially declared Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Peña Nieto the president-elect, a ruling that was defiantly rejected by leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the second-place finisher who, for the second presidential contest in a row, called his followers into the streets of the capital to protest.

The unanimous ruling by the seven-judge panel clears the way for the return of Peña Nieto’s party, known as the PRI, to power. It had lost the quasi-authoritarian grip on the country that it had enjoyed for more than seven decades in 2000, after numerous democratic reforms.

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To listen to Pena Nieto’s first message as President-elect click on the link, Primer mensaje de EPN como presidente electo.

Mexican retailer lashes out at losing presidential candidate

The Los Angeles Times, 8/02/2012

One of Mexico’s largest retailers has been unwillingly dragged into the hullabaloo over just how dirty the nation’s recent presidential election was, and now it’s yelling “ya basta!” — enough already — and accusing the runner-up of promoting protests at its stores that have been marked by “aggressiveness and violence.”

The retail giant Soriana, which operates more than 500 grocery stores, quickie marts and Wal-Mart-style megastores, became entangled in the country’s impassioned post-electoral narrative soon after the July 1 vote. At that time reports surfaced that supporters of the victorious Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, were jamming the outlets’ aisles in the hopes of redeeming prepaid Soriana gift cards that the PRI had allegedly given them.

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Protesters Blockade Televisa, Mexico’s Biggest TV Station, Over Election Coverage

Huffington Post/Reuters, 7/26/2012

Thousands of protesters on Thursday blockaded the studios of Mexico’s most popular TV network, accusing it of biased coverage of the July 1 presidential election.

Shouting “Tell the truth,” the demonstrators, including students and union workers, stopped employees entering the offices of the Televisa studios in Mexico City although they allowed others to leave.

The protesters allege that Televisa supported Enrique Pena Nieto, who won the election by almost 7 percentage points over leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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Mexico’s PRI says left violated campaign finance rules

Fox News Latino/EFE, 7/24/2012

Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s campaign should be investigated for using grassroots organizations as “parallel structures” to evade campaign finance rules, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, said.

Both the leftist Progressive Movement and its presidential candidate received funds that they hid from election officials, “triangulating them via grassroots organizations, such as Austeridad Republicana and Honestidad Valiente, among others,” PRI leaders said in a press conference on Monday.

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Thousands march in Mexico City against presumed presidential winner Enrique Pena Nieto

The Washington Post/The Associated Press, 07/22/2012

Thousands marched through Mexico City’s center on Sunday to protest what they called the “imposition” of the candidate of the old ruling party as the country’s new president.

Protesters carried signs accusing presumed President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto of electoral fraud and Mexico television giant Televisa of being a “factory of lies.” Opponents say Pena Nieto’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, won the July 1 election through vote-buying and overspending, including paying major media outlets such as Televisa for favorable coverage.

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Take the high road in Mexico [Op-Ed]

León Krauze, The Los Angeles Times, 07/20/2012

At the beginning of May, with a couple of months to go until the Mexican elections, I interviewed Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the presidential candidate of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party. We spoke for more than an hour, most of which he devoted to his usual talking points about how today’s Mexico is a cabal of rich men who operate in cahoots with a corrupt political system obsessed with self-preservation.

I had heard it all before, as had the Mexican electorate, which rejected Lopez Obrador’s bid for the presidency last month, giving the victory to his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, opponent, Enrique Peña Nieto, by more than 6 percentage points.

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Mexico parties join to demand campaign probe

The Associated Press, 07/19/2012

The conservative National Action Party joined Mexico’s main leftist party Thursday in accusing the winner of the country’s July 1 presidential election of campaign wrongdoing, saying it has “strong and conclusive” evidence of the use of illicit funds.

National Action leader Gustavo Madero said his party is demanding that electoral authorities investigate the purported use of pre-paid debit cards by apparent winner Enrique Pena Nieto’s campaign to disburse an estimated 108 million pesos ($8.2 million) in funds. That alone would be about a third of all the money the candidate was legally allowed to use in the race.

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Mexico election: Lopez Obrador challenges result

BBC News, 07/13/2012

The runner-up in Mexico’s presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has filed a legal challenge to the result of the 1 July vote.

He said he would prove that illicit money was used to buy votes and secure the victory of centrist candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, who denies this.

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Mexico elections certain to face court challenges

CBS News, 07/10/2012

Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday he will mount court challenges against the results of the July 1 election, claiming vote-buying and campaign overspending by the winner of official vote counts, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The announcement comes amid rising calls to investigate what appears to have been the distribution of thousands of pre-paid gift cards to voters before the election, and allegations by López Obrador’s supporters that some state government officials passed funds to Peña Nieto’s campaign effort.

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