MEXICO CITY — The apparent victor of Mexico’s presidential race, Enrique Pena Nieto, struggled Monday with the sticky bonds of his party’s notorious past, the limitation of his election mandate and an opponent who refused to concede defeat.
His long-ruling and now-returned Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, won about 38 percent of the vote and is unlikely to get a majority in Congress. In fact, it might lose seats.
He faces an old guard in the PRI that still exercises considerable power, a war with fierce drug cartels and a still sluggish economy. His closest rival, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who polled a higher-than-expected vote of about 32 percent, refused to accept the loss, and many of his militant followers were suspicious of the results.
President Barack Obama called Pena Nieto on Monday to congratulate him. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said Obama told him the United States “looks forward to advancing common goals, including promoting democracy, economic prosperity, and security in the region and around the globe, in the coming years.”
Pena Nieto pledged to continue his country’s anti-drug offensive but “with a new strategy to reduce violence and protect, above all, the lives of Mexicans.” He promised there would be “no pact or truce” with drug cartels.
He told reporters Monday he would start working immediately on tax, energy and labor reforms, and would “sit down with the president (Felipe Calderon) … to talk about what can be put forward before I take office” on Dec. 1.
