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Mexicans Vote to Elect New President

By VOA News July 01, 2018

Mexicans are going to the polls Sunday, as a leftist who has vowed to "put [U.S. President Donald Trump] in his place" is widely expected to replace outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Polls conducted before Sunday's vote consistently showed the veteran leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, widely known as AMLO, with a double-digit lead.

Tensions between the United States and Mexico have flared particularly in the wake of the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, which has led to the separation of children from the parents, many of them Mexican, at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lopez Obrador, 64, who got his start in politics decades ago as an advocate for indigenous rights, has campaigned on a platform of sweeping change and has been described as a nationalist. This is the first presidential election for his party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which has formed a coalition with the left-wing Labor Party and right-wing Social Encounter Party.

Mexico will be electing a new president as well as lawmakers for both chambers of Congress and nine governors. The largest election in recent history, it is also Mexico's most violent, with over 100 politicians murdered in the buildup to Sunday's vote.

Lopez Obrador's greatest competition is expected to come from Ricardo Anaya of the National Action Party (PAN).

Anaya and outgoing President Pena Nieto cast their ballots Sunday as officials said polling has going smoothly.

Meanwhile, advocates representing tens of thousands of indigenous people in the wooded countryside of southwestern Michoacan state and in traditional Maya communities in the southern states of Chiapas and Guerrero are insisting they will block voting in their communities to protest what they call a failing system.

Outgoing Pena Nieto, elected in 2012, sports a historically low approval rating, slipping as low as 17 percent last year, according to Pew Research Center polling. The Mexican constitution restricts candidates to one six-year term, with no chance of re-election. And his six years were marked by social and economic turmoil.