PRI wins Mexican election

[waltky]

All Granny wants to know is how he gonna stop the drug smugglin'?...

Mexico's former ruling party claims victory
1 July`12 - Mexican electoral officials projected victory for presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, whose once long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) would retake power after 12 years in opposition.

A quick count released by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) projected Peña Nieto winning approximately 38% of the popular vote - 7 points better than left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who deferred on declaring defeat. Final results will be announced later in the week, but Peña Nieto and the PRI celebrated an apparent victory, anyway. "Mexico has won … democracy won," Peña Nieto said in a speech at party headquarters late Sunday night, which promised good government, respect for the law and a firm hand against Mexico's warring drug cartels. "The fight against crime is going to continue," he said. "There's no returning to the past."

The PRI controlled the country for much of the last century and presided over pesos crises, government graft and allegedly rigged elections.But times have changed and so has the PRI, the telegenic Peña Nieto said repeatedly during his campaign, which appealed more to the future than the past and promised to unleash long-stalled structural reforms he says are necessary for Mexico to achieve annual economic growth of 6%. Peña Nieto promises robust economic growth, generous job creation and even an end to the corruption his party became notorious for during the 71 consecutive years it ruled — until being voted out of power in 2000.

He also promises better results in the crackdown on organized crime and drug cartels that has claimed 50,000 lives and to focus on reducing incidents of murder, kidnap and extortion, although specifics in his approach have been lacking. "Voters have had enough of the (governing National Action Party) and want change," said George Grayson, Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary, who was in Mexico City for the election. Additionally, "The PRI spent a Midas fortune" on its campaign and promoting Peña Nieto's image over the past half decade, Grayson said. The PRI also appeared close to taking majorities in both houses of Congress, which have been divided since 1997.

MORE

See also:

Mexican old guard leads, ruling party concedes
2 July`12 — Mexico's old guard prepared to sail back into power after a 12-year hiatus Sunday as the president of the country's long-ruling party said that exit polls "irreversibly" favored its presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto.

Three major exit polls showed Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, with about 40 percent of the vote in the presidential election, nearly 10 points ahead of his nearest challenger. Two were exit polls and the third a "quick count" based on the actual vote. The Federal Elections Institute said that with 5 percent of the vote counted Pena Nieto had 36 percent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party had 31 percent and Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Action Party had just less than 28 percent. Vazquez Mota, 51, was the first to concede, followed by New Alliance candidate Gabriel Quadri, who had only single-digit support. That left Lopez Obrador as the single holdout as election officials prepared to release an official representative quick count at 11:45 p.m. local time. PRI president Joaquin Coldwell said the party would await the official count before it declared victory.

At the PRI headquarters in Mexico City, a party atmosphere was building as sound technicians, waiters and an army of reporters waited in a large white tent in the party complex patio. A norteno band broke out playing with Vazquez Mota's concession. Pena Nieto had yet to arrive. There were plenty of reasons to celebrate. The party also appeared likely to retake at least a plurality in the two houses of Congress and some governorships. Critics say the party's 71-year rule was characterized by authoritarian and corrupt practices. But the PRI has sought to portray itself as a group that has been modernized and does not seek a return to its old ways. Enrique Pena Nieto appears to be accomplishing what many thought would never happen again: the return of a strong and dynamic PRI," said Eric Olson of the Washington-based Mexico Institute. "The question: How will they govern?"

Lopez Obrador took hundreds of thousands of supporters to the streets in protest when he narrowly lost in 2006. "We hope the candidate of the left will act with democratic maturity and also recognize the results," Coldwell said. Vazquez Mota garnered little more than 23 percent in exit polls released by Milenio and TV Azteca networks and quick count by Mitofsky. Lopez Obrador had about 30 percent of the vote. The PRI has been bolstered by voter fatigue due to a sluggish economy and the sharp escalation of a drug war that has killed roughly 50,000 Mexicans over the past six years. Hugo Rubio, 33, a municipal employee in Nezalhualcoyotl, says what he expects is "more jobs, more tranquility in terms of security" under Pena Nieto. "He has demonstrated that (the party) had changed, that he cares about the people who are most in need," Rubio said at a red-clad crowd of supporters gathered with banners and balloons.

MORE

 

[Mr. H.]

When we stop using, they'll stop delivering.

 

[Mad Scientist]

I'm sure things will improve now.

 

[Katzndogz]

Is that the guy who said he would surrender to the cartels if the cartels stopped killing people?

 

[waltky]

Too many people killed by the drug cartels votin'?...

More than half of the vote in Mexico's presidential election to be recounted
4 July`12 - Mexican electoral authorities said Wednesday they will recount more than half the ballot boxes used in the weekend's presidential elections after finding inconsistencies in the vote tallies.

Of the 143,000 ballot boxes used during Sunday’s vote, 78,012 will be opened and the votes recounted, said Edmundo Jacobo, executive secretary of Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute. Jacobo said the recount could be finished by Thursday. Mexico’s electoral law states that the votes should be recounted if there are inconsistencies in the final tally reports, when the result shows a difference of one percentage point or less between the first and second place finishers or if all the votes in a ballot box are in favor of the same candidate. With 99 percent of the vote tallied in the preliminary count, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, led with 38 percent of the vote. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party had 32 percent. Authorities also will recount 61 percent of the ballot boxes in the vote for the Senate and 60 percent in the vote for the lower house of Congress, Jacobo said.

Lopez Obrador has refused to accept the preliminary vote tallies, saying the election campaign was marred by overspending, vote-buying and favorable treatment of Pena Nieto by Mexico’s semi-monopolized television industry. The leftist candidate said Tuesday that his team had detected irregularities at 113,855 polling places, and called for a total recount. Feeding suspicion of large-scale vote-buying were scenes of thousands of people rushing to grocery stores this week to redeem pre-paid gift cards they said the PRI had given them ahead of the vote. Several told reporters they had been told to turn in a photocopy of their voter ID card in order to get the gift cards. Under Mexican election law, giving voters gifts is not a crime unless the gift is conditioned on a certain vote or is meant to influence a vote. However, the cost of such gifts must be reported, and cannot exceed campaign spending limits. Violations are usually punished with fines, but generally aren’t considered grounds for annulling an election.

Shoppers nearly stripped some shelves at a Soriana store in the poor district of Iztapalapa and officials in Mexico City, which is governed by Democratic Revolution, ordered at least one branch of the chain closed for alleged violation of safety codes. Both the PRI and the supermarket company denied any irregularities. PRI spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said that “Neither the PRI’s executive committee, nor Enrique Pena Nieto’s campaign has contracted any service from the Soriana grocery store chain. Asked if some other local or congressional PRI candidate could have done it on behalf of Pena Nieto, he said “I don’t know.” Humberto Fayad, a spokesman for the Soriana chain, denied the company had sold huge amounts of gift cards to the PRI. “There is no agreement between the PRI and Soriana, or Soriana and any other political party. Soriana is a non-political company,” Fayad said.

The PRI, too, accused rivals in many parts of the country of handing out groceries or using government programs to influence voters. The governing National Action Party accused Pena Nieto’s campaign of acquiring about 9,500 prepaid gift cards worth nearly $5.2 million (71 million pesos) to give away for votes. Authorities said a business had bought that number of cards, but that they had found no direct evidence of vote-buying. That investigation continues. On Tuesday, Alfredo Figueroa, a council member of the Electoral Institute, said authorities were investigating complaints about the Soriana gift cards. Members of the institute have said they were aware of attempts to engage in vote buying.

Source

 

[waltky]

Nieto win confirmed after recount......

Official count confirms Pena Nieto win in Mexico
5 July`12 – The official count of Mexico's presidential election confirmed the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto, the candidate seeking to return the former autocratic ruling party to power after a 12-year hiatus, the country's electoral authority reported Thursday night in a major step toward the resolution of the contested vote.

With just over 99 percent of the ballot boxes counted as of 9 p.m., more than half of them double-checked due to the possibility of fraud, Pena Nieto had more than 38 percent of the vote. In second place was leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with more than 31 percent. That gave Pena Nieto a lead of more than 3.3 million votes. Lopez Obrador alleges Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, engaged in vote-buying that illegally tilted millions of votes toward the party that controlled virtually all Mexico's institutions until it lost the presidency in 2000. Lopez Obrador has not specified exactly how many votes he believes were bought.

The ruling-party candidate who came third in Mexico's presidential elections also said earlier in the day that campaign spending violations had marred the vote, although she stopped short of challenging the legitimacy of the outcome. The complaint by National Action Party candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota nonetheless added weight to growing accusations that Pena Nieto benefited from vote-buying schemes.

The accusations are expected to become the basis of legal challenges to the final vote count, which must be certified in September by Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal. The tribunal has declined to overturn previously contested elections, including a 2006 presidential vote that was far closer than Sunday's. "We need electoral authorities to conduct a detailed review of campaign spending that obviously exceeded legal limits, and that was also associated with vote buying," Vazquez Mota said. "In this election there were clear circumstances of inequity that had a decisive effect on the vote results."

Vazquez Mota said that while the complaints wouldn't invalidate the election results, they should motivate changes in electoral laws to prevent such practices in the future. The accusations began surfacing in June, but sharpened early this week as thousands of people rushed to grocery stores on the outskirts of Mexico City Tuesday to redeem pre-paid gift cards worth about 100 pesos ($7.50), which many said they had been given to them by supporters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, prior to Sunday's elections.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Granny says she hopes he does a better job of it than Calderon did...

Mexico to keep fighting drug cartels
Jul. 6, 2012 - New leader commits to partnership with U.S.

The president-elect of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, said in an interview Thursday that he wants to expand his country's drug-war partnership with the United States but that he would not support the presence of armed American agents in Mexico. Peña Nieto said he would consider hosting U.S. military instructors on Mexican soil, but in a training capacity only, to help his soldiers and marines benefit from U.S. counterinsurgency tactics learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also approves of the continuation of flights by U.S. surveillance drones over Mexico to gather intelligence on drug trafficking, but future missions would be run by Mexico with U.S. assistance and technology, he said. "Without a doubt, I am committed to having an intense, close relationship of effective collaboration measured by results," Peña Nieto said in an interview that focused on Mexico's violent struggle with transnational crime organizations.

But he was clear that he did not endorse the two countries pursing the kind of joint armed counternarcotics operations carried out by U.S. forces in Colombia and Central America. Mexican laws should be enforced by Mexicans, Peña Nieto said. "It is just as if I asked you: 'Should our police operate on the other side of the border?' No. That would not be allowed by U.S. law. Our situation is the same," he said. Peña Nieto is the projected winner of Sunday's presidential election, with final results due this weekend. His apparent victory restores to power the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico for more than 70 years before its ouster in 2000.

The president-elect was interviewed at the JW Marriott Hotel at the edge of Mexico City, where international companies have erected a canyon of glass corporate towers. Peña Nieto has already faced wariness from U.S. lawmakers, who fear that he will pull back from the drug fight and return to the ways of his PRI forebears, notorious for accommodating drug smugglers to preserve public order. He has aggressively pushed back against those allegations. But he said he would change the way success is measured in the drug war in Mexico. Using what standard? he is asked. "Homicides," Peña Nieto said.

Read more: Mexico to keep fighting drug cartels

 

[Kiki Cannoli]

The country has not stopped protesting the election outcome. Most voting stations were out of ballots by 10am, voters scrambled to find a station, fraud seems to be the popular thought.

Equally interesting, a media blackout. Not on TV, radio nor internet are national news resources reporting on the protests. We are receiving our news on facebook from all over the world as people are capturing videos on youtube and posting them so that we can see them.

 

[waltky]

Mayor Mota of Morales murdered in Mexico...

Mexico mayor slain a day after taking office
Jan 2,`16 -- The mayor of a city south of Mexico's capital was shot to death on Saturday, less than a day after taking office, officials said.

Gunmen burst into the house of Mayor Gisela Mota in the city of Temixco and killed her, said the government of Morelos state, where Temixco is located. Two presumed assailants were killed and two others detained, said Morelos Gov. Graco Ramirez in the government statement. Officials attributed her killing to organized crime. Mota's leftist Democratic Revolution Party released a statement describing her as "a strong and brave woman who on taking office as mayor, declared that her fight against crime would be frontal and direct."

Gisela Mota waves during her swearing in ceremony as mayor of Temixco, Morelos State, Mexico. The Morelos state Public Security Commission says attackers invaded Mota's house on Saturday morning and killed her​

Temixco is a city of about 100,000 people neighboring Cuernavaca, a resort and industrial city which has been suffering kidnappings and extortion linked to organized crime groups. Though Cuernavaca is the state capital of Morelos, Temixco is the seat of several state institutions including the Public Security Commission, which coordinates state and local police forces. Morelos also neighbors drug cartel-plagued Guerrero state.

Mota, who had been a federal congresswoman, was sworn into office on New Year's Day. She was killed the following day. Morelos Gov. Ramirez vowed there "would be no impunity" in her killing and promised that state officials would not cede to the challenge presented by organized crime. Federal and state forces are deployed in Cuernavaca and municipalities near the Guerrero state border in what is called "Operation Delta." Local mayors and officials in Mexico have often been targeted by drug cartels.

News from The Associated Press

 

[waltky]

Suspects caught in slaying of newly inaugurated mayor...

3 held in slaying of Mexico mayor a day after taking office
January 3, 2016 — Three people, including a minor, were being held Sunday in the slaying of a newly inaugurated mayor just hours into her term in a gang-troubled central Mexican city.

Morelos Gov. Graco Ramirez ordered flags on state buildings flown at half-staff and called for three days of mourning following the killing of Temixco Mayor Gisela Mota. He blamed organized crime for killing the 33-year-old Mota, a former federal congresswoman who had been sworn in as mayor the day before she was gunned down in her home Saturday morning. Ramirez ordered security measures for all of the state's mayors, though he gave no details on what that involved.

Ramon Castro Castro, Roman Catholic bishop of Cuernavaca, celebrated Mass at Mota's home Sunday and later spoke critically of a state where some areas are in control of organized crime. "One theory could be that it was a warning to the other mayors," Castro said to reporters. "If you don't cooperate with organized crime, look at what will happen to you. It's to scare them." Following Mota's killing, two suspects were killed in a clash with police and three others arrested. Officials said those taken into custody were a 32-year-old woman, an 18-year-old man and a minor. They gave few other details, though state Attorney General Javier Perez Duron said the suspects had been tied to other crimes.

Temixco, with about 100,000 people, is a suburb of Cuernavaca, a city famed among tourists for its colonial center, gardens and jacaranda-decked streets. "The city of eternal spring" was long a favorite weekend getaway for people from nearby Mexico City. But drug and extortion gangs have plagued the area in recent years, driving away some tourists and residents. The expressway — and drug routes — between Mexico City and the country's murder capital of Acapulco cuts through Cuernavaca and Temixco. Neither the governor nor prosecutors indicated which criminal organization might be involved in the mayor's slaying.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Mayor's assassination is a warning from drug cartel...

Governor says Mexican mayor’s killing a warning by drug gang
January 4,`16 — A drug gang killed a newly installed mayor over the weekend as a warning to other officials to reject state police control of local cops and let cartels co-opt low-paid local officers, the governor of Morelos state said Monday.

Gov. Graco Ramirez sent a post on his Twitter account blaming the slaying of Temixco Mayor Gisela Mota on the Rojos gang, which has been fighting a bloody turf battle with the Guerreros Unidos gang across the neighboring state of Guerrero in southern Mexico. Their rivalry may have played a role in the worst mass disappearance in recent memory, that of 43 students in Guerrero in 2014. Some suspects told investigators that Guerreros Unidos mistook the students for members of the Rojos and used local police under their control to capture them. Without going into details, Ramirez had said at a news conference Sunday that Mota’s killing was tied to his efforts to unify state control of police forces in Morelos as a way to combat corruption in local police forces.

Mourners carry the coffin of slain mayor of Temixco, Gisela Mota, to the cemetery in Pueblo Viejo, Mexico, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. Mota took office as mayor of the city of on Jan. 1 and was shot at her home on Jan. 2. The governor of the southern Mexican state of Morelos says the killing of the mayor was a warning by drug gangs, meant to convince other officials to reject state police control of local forces.​

Mota had accepted state police control, though she had demanded traffic cops remain under local authority. “This is a message and clear threat to the mayors who have recently taken office not to accept the coordination plan and police framework that we have been promoting,” Ramirez said. Ramirez said the state police plan has led to a decrease in the wave of kidnappings, extortions and drug gang killings that swept the state in recent years. Many critics have questioned whether the unified command will be cleaner or more efficient than the local forces and the state government has struggled to persuade mayors to give up control of officers who are a source of influence, protection and often income from bribes.

A local newspaper, La Union de Morelos, cast doubt on Ramirez’s motives in an editorial Monday that accused him of opportunistically using Mota’s killing “to get around the growing opposition to a model of security whose effectiveness is belied by figures and facts.” The biggest holdout has been the recently installed mayor of the state capital, Cuernavaca, former soccer star Cuauhtemoc Blanco. Despite Blanco’s refusal, Ramirez announced he was imposing state command over Cuernavaca’s police, and he suggested dark forces were influencing the pugnacious former athlete, who has never before held public office. “Behind Cuauhtemoc Blanco there are people who want to take advantage of his lack of experience, to allow crime gangs to enter Cuernavaca,” Ramirez tweeted Monday. The Cuernavaca city government said Monday it would continue to oppose the state plan.

MORE