The victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador starts a new era in Mexico

THE result was predictable, but earth-shaking even so. On July 1st Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a charismatic populist, won Mexico’s presidency in the country’s first democratic landslide. His margin of victory suggests that his electoral coalition will control congress and the government of Mexico City, the capital, giving Mr López Obrador unprecedented power for a modern president. As in America and parts of Europe, an angry electorate has repudiated the established political elite. In Mexico’s case voters have elected an unpredictable leftist. Mr Lopez Obrador, a 64-year-old ex-mayor of Mexico City who has run for the presidency twice before, leads an official “rapid count” of ballots, conducted shortly after polls closed, with 47.3% of the vote. His nearest challenger, Ricardo Anaya of the National Action Party (PAN), trails far behind on 26.7%. José Antonio Meade of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won a dismal 17.3%. The size of Mr López Obrador’s...Continue reading

from Americas https://ift.tt/2KlWcJz
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT