http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/07/04/249244/mexico-runnerup-recount/
Wed Jul 4, 2012 1:57AM GMT
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (file photo)
The runner-up in Mexico's presidential election, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has asked election authorities to recount the votes from Sunday's contest due to irregularities.
Lopez Obrador, the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), said his campaign would ask the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to recount the votes, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
"We're going to ask them to clean up the election and make it transparent," he told reporters in Mexico City. "For the good of the democracy and the good of the country, they need to count all the votes."
Lopez Obrador, who finished about 6.5 percentage points behind President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said the election had been marred by PRI vote-buying and other abuses.
"It's a national embarrassment how the PRI's leaders and their sponsors have acted, and the totally immoral way in which Enrique Pena Nieto has behaved," Lopez Obrador said.
With nearly half of Mexico's 112 million people living in poverty, the economy was one of the main issues in the election campaign.
The war on drugs that was launched nearly six years ago by President Felipe Calderon was another issue dominating the campaign. His military crackdown on drug cartels has turned parts of the country into war zones.
More than 55,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006.
KA/HGL
No comments:
Post a Comment