Latest news on Mexico’s Presidential Campaign

By Adina Moloman

Sources: The Economist,  The Washington Post, New York Times

With a little more than two month before the next Mexico’s presidential election, there are three main candidates disputing the presidency, but voters are frustrating by corruption, impunity, poverty, monopolistic companies, etc.

Opinion polls vary widely (depending on the data source), and generally show the PRI as leader, followed by the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution.

Those three leaders are facing greater challenges. Enrique Peña Nieto from Institutional Revolutionary Party ( P.R.I.), the party that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, has to deal with the fact that he must re-invent PRI as an anticorruption party with a new and modern vision. Josefina Vázquez Mota, a former education secretary under the current president, the candidate from the National Action Party has also to work on a new strategy because of the disappointment that voters are actually facing considering that in the past 12 years, it was registering an increase in violence and continued corruption. Optimists are seeing her as a   first female president who will start talking and acting on female human rights.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, a former mayor of Mexico City who lost the last election in 2006 by 0.6 percentage points, has to challenge his radical style in order to govern as a moderate.

All of them absolutely must confront organized crime, and work on new strategies on declining illegal immigration and attend the different economic sectors.

The attention lately was over the country’s oil sector, state-owned company, Pemex, to transform it in private investment and in a near future the idea is to privatize all government functions and companies.

A large number of voters are watching Televisa and TV Azteca, the main national TV chains, and are influenced by what they are watching, but there are a few Million Facebook users and Twitter users, that are having a more particular opinion and other few millions that are not using a social media which are having a more radical opinion, that’s way might be a little bit difficult to have a opinion on the results of the election. PAN and PRI’s candidates are working on the strategy of using social media, to attract potential voters.