Voices of Mexico no. 94

Our Voice

Since Mexico's elections, the new presidential team headed by Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) has been readying itself to take office December 1. According to Federal Electoral Institute official figures (see www.ife.org.mx), more than 50 million votes were cast, 38 percent of which went to the victor, followed by 31.6 percent for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, backed by the different left organizations, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Labor Party (pt), and the Citizens' Movement Party (PMC).

Undoubtedly, the incumbent National Action Party's plunge to third place on the national spectrum with 25.4 percent of the votes has been a debacle that has led its leaders to talk about the need to reorganize the party from the bottom up. After heading the democratic transition for the last 12 years, spiking violence in Mexico and the government strategy for fighting organized crime determined the citizenry's decision to make the elections a referendum on the pan, represented by Felipe Calderón.