Protesters take part in a march organized by student movement Yo Soy 132 against Mexico's president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto in Monterrey July 22, 2012. (Reuters/Daniel Becerri)
At least 32,000 protesters marched through Mexico City on Sunday to
protest the “imposition” of the new president. They accuse
president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, a member of the old ruling party, of
electoral fraud.
Protesters have dubbed the country’s TV giant Televisa a “factory of
lies.” Demonstrators marching through to capital claimed that Nieto’s
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won the election by vote-buying
and an aggressive PR campaign through major media outlets such as
Televisa, which they claim was well paid for positive coverage of
Nieto’s presidential campaign.
Enrique Pena Nieto, 46, won the
election with 38.2 per cent of the vote against 31.6 per cent for the
leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Nieto’s victory brought
the Institutional Revolutionary Party back to power after being in the
opposition for 12 years.
The ruling President Felipe Calderon of the conservative National Action Party came in third.
Opponents of the victorious candidate demanded urgent domestic reforms.
The
PRI in turn accuses the losing leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador of "disqualifying the entire electoral process with lies."
Televisa has also denied all allegations.
The last presidential
election in Mexico in 2006 also ended with the defeat of Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador, who narrowly lost to the ruling conservative president.
In 2006 Obrador organized hundreds of thousands of his supporters to
rally in downtown Mexico City for weeks. This time, however, Obrador
announced that his victory is evident and he has no intention of calling
his supporters to the streets.
According to local
authorities, the demonstration on Sunday gathered 32,000 people whereas
the protesters claim their number was twice as large. The latest
demonstration is the second of it since the July 1 elections. The first
rally on July 7 gathered 50,000 protesters.
The final results of
the elections are left to be certified in September by the Federal
Electoral Tribunal. Some political movements have urged its supporters
to disregard the inauguration of the new Mexican president set for
December 1.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party at one time
ruled Mexico for a 71-year stretch. Those years, party critics say, were
marked with corruption, nepotism and multiple cases of voter fraud.
Image from Twitter/@olmedopato
Reuters/Daniel Becerri
Image from Twitter/@omar_velazquez
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