Mexican Presidential Campaign Begins
The political fate of Mexico for the next six years will be determined on July 1, 2012, as Mexico holds its presidential election, selecting a successor to current President Felipe Calderón. Some 80 million Mexicans will be eligible to vote for a new president, 628 legislators and thousands of other officials in the general elections. Enrique Peña Nieto has been selected as the candidate of the Compromiso por Mexico or PRI. Its decades of rule, when the party controlled governments, unions and media across the nation, were marked by corruption and heavy-handedness. Its opponents warn that PRI’s claims that it has reformed and modernized are bogus.
The conservative National Action Party, or PAN, represented by current President Calderón, has not decided on a candidate yet. The PAN suffers from growing discontent with the federal government over issues including a sluggish economy and rising violence from Calderon’s military-led offensive against powerful drug cartels.
Former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who ran in the last presidential election, is awaiting formal confirmation of his candidacy for the PRD.
Excerpted from Banderas News and The Los Angeles Times