Mexican legal challenge to Enrique Peņa Nieto's election win dismissed
Source: The Guardian
When Enrique Peña Nieto was a candidate in Mexico's presidential elections, allegations that he had benefited from favourable media coverage triggered mass student demonstrations against him and his party. When he won the 1 July election, those allegations formed part of a legal challenge to his victory.
Now, as the young and telegenic president-elect from the Institutional Revolutionary party, or PRI, prepares to take charge of the country on 1 December, the media allegations have been deemed legally irrelevant – and the furore they once caused has all but died away.
The runner-up, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and his party of Democratic Revolution, or PRD, were unable to persuade Mexico's federal electoral tribunal that there had been unfair favourable coverage of Peña Nieto, alongside other allegations such as massive vote buying and dubious campaign funding, such as to violate constitutional guarantees that elections be "authentic and fair".
The part of the tribunal's unanimous decision on 30 August that referred to media bias drew heavily on an earlier decision by the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE. That decision threw out a specific PRD complaint about "hidden publicity" by Peña Nieto, particularly on TV channels and other outlets associated with the broadcasting giant Televisa.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/26/mexican-challenge-pena-nieto-dismissed
