AFP/Mexico City


Enrique Pena Nieto speaks after receiving the official verdict as Mexico’s president-elect from the magistrate President of the Mexican Electoral Court.

Enrique Pena Nieto was finally declared Mexico’s president-elect on Friday after a two-month legal fight, but his leftist rival refused to accept the result and called for a rally.
The federal electoral tribunal officially named Pena Nieto the winner of the July 1 election after dismissing a bid by leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to scrap the result over vote-buying claims.
The decision clears the way for Pena Nieto to begin his six-year term on December 1, marking the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the nation’s highest office after a 12-year absence.
Lopez Obrador claims that the PRI, which governed Mexico with an authoritarian grip from 1929 to 2000, bought 5mn votes and violated campaign spending rules in order to secure Pena Nieto’s victory.
“The elections were neither clean nor free nor genuine, therefore I will not recognise an illegitimate administration that emerged from votes that were bought and other grave violations of the constitution,” he told reporters.
The former Mexico City mayor called on his followers to gather for a demonstration in the capital’s historic main square, the Zocalo, on September 9, and to decide the way forward.
“Civil disobedience is an honorable duty when it is aimed against thieves who steal the hope and happiness of the people,” he said. “I call on all supporters of democracy to gather at the Zocalo.”
Lopez Obrador led mass protests that paralysed Mexico City in 2006 after he lost that year’s election to Felipe Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, by a mere 0.06 percentage points.
But he was unable to change the outcome.
This time, the electoral court confirmed that Pena Nieto, who rejected is opponent’s allegations, defeated Lopez Obrador by 3.3mn votes. Pena Nieto won 38.2% of the vote compared to 31.6% for Lopez Obrador.
“This electoral process was not free of problems, but they were adequately resolved within the law,” said judge Maria del Carmen Alanis Figueroa.
Judge Flavio Galvan Rivera said: “It is my personal conviction that the election was free, fair and genuine.”