Mexico: IFE Confirms Peña Nieto’s Win

The Mexican Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has announced that the final district count confirmed that Enrique Peña Nieto won last Sunday’s presidential elections.

Peña Nieto represents the Compromiso por México, a coalition composed of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and the Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM).

The final district count shows Peña Nieto winning the election with 38.21% of votes, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist PRD coming in second with 31.59% of votes, and Josefina Vásquez Mota of the incumbent PAN party coming in third with 25.41% of the votes.

The district count began Wednesday morning and took four days in total.

Today’s confirmation of the voting figures does not yet cement Peña Nieto’s win. Now that the Federal Electoral Institute has finalized their count, they have passed the determination of the election on the Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF).

The Electoral Tribunal is charged with investigating any challenges that may be presented to the vote. Their final confirmation is required to validate the election.

Accordingly, Peña Nieto cannot legally be called ‘president elect’ until the Tribunal has released its verdict.

The investigation process could take as long as two months. Opposition candidates now have four days when they can present their complaints to the Electoral Tribunal, which then has until 31stAugust to investigate allegations. The final verdict is expected on 6th September.

Opposition candidates have accused Peña Nieto’s coalition of buying votes in the election, a practice that the PRI party was notorious for during its seventy years of autocratic rule in the previous century.

The leftist PRD party has argued that as many as five million votes may have been bought. According to the numbers released today from the IFE, Peña Nieto garnered 19.1 million votes, while López Obrador received 15 million.

The PRD has accused Peña Nieto’s coalition of giving out cards to popular shopping centre Soriana and pre-paid cards from financial group Monex. López Obrador’s leftist opposition has also accused Peña Nieto’s coalition of exceeding the 30 million-peso campaign-spending cap.

The incumbent PAN party has also pointed to irregularities during the election, but candidate Vásquez Mota conceded defeat shortly after the polls closed last Sunday.

The PRD is now asking the PAN to join forces in voicing their complaints about alleged irregularities in the electoral process. Today, director of the PRD Jesús Zambrano announced that he and his PAN counterpart Gustavo Madero are in the process of organizing a meeting to discuss possible collaboration. The PRD is particularly interested in the parties’ sharing information that they have about the PRI’s finances.

Yesterday, thousands of Mexican citizens marched in protest of Peña Nieto’s win and of alleged irregularities in the electoral process. Major marches took place in Mexico City and in at least nine other states across the country.

A significant proportion of the demonstrators are students, many of them members of the ‘#YoSoy132’ movement that emerged during this year’s elections. The protest is one of several that have taken place in the week following the election, with the demonstrators turning out as early as last Monday.