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July 2, 2012
Mexico's Opposition Party Wins Presidential Election, Early Results Show
Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate of Mexico's opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), appears to have won Sunday's presidential election with about 38 percent of the vote (WSJ), according to a partial vote count by Mexico's election agency. Leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador garnered around 31 percent over the vote, while Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), amassed just 26 percent. Vázquez Mota conceded defeat, but López said he would wait for the final results in the coming days. The PRI ruled Mexico for seventy-one years, until losing its first presidential election in 2000.
"But there are things on the agenda that the next president will need to deal with. One is energy reform. Mexico's energy sector is closed; the constitution states that it has to be run by the state. Everyone agrees that Mexico needs more investment, more technical capacity, and to grow production. To get to the next level and keep production growing, they need a lot of foreign direct investment,
"Mexico watchers see a holy trinity of labor, fiscal and energy reforms as vital to bringing the economy into the 21st century and even narrowing the income gap with the United States, which is about three times wealthier than Mexico in terms of per-capita GDP. Energy reform is the most important of the three," writes Reuters' Krista Hughes.
"Mexican voters seem to want a government that can administer the country effectively, make much-needed reforms and provide basic security and welfare. The candidates are not running on an anti-American platform or offering a Hugo Chavez-style tilt toward socialism, even though roughly 45 percent of Mexicans are living in poverty," writes Nick Miroff for Global Post.
