Frontrunner Pena Nieto in Twitter Storm Clare Conway - The Week UK
go to original May 10, 2012

Twitter rises up against Socialist candidate Enrique Peña Nieto after failed hashtag stunt.

Mexico's frontrunner for president, Enrique Peña Nieto, was lampooned on Twitter last night after a video emerged of the candidate telling a crowd of supporters to tweet praise in co-ordinated bursts so he could trend on the social networking site.

The video, which was leaked to YouTube under the heading 'Fraud 2012 – Peña Nieto and his bots on Twitter' on Tuesday, prompted an outpouring of invective against the socialist candidate.

By this morning, Mexico's Mother's Day, the angry tweeters had managed to get a hashtag called #chingatumadreEPN (#f**kyourmotherEPN) to trend on Twitter.  

"From all the housewives, chingatumadreEPN," tweeted one person, while another said: "Happy Mother's Day to everyone! Except Peña Nieto. #chingatumadreEPN."

Other tweeters used the hashtag to lambast Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party and call the frontrunner a phoney, repeating allegations he had doctored the number of gang-related murders while governor of the State of Mexico.

The 45-year-old candidate, whose good looks, according to the Toronto Sun, have done him no harm with female voters, came under fire in January after it emerged he had conducted extramarital affairs and had two children out of wedlock.

Nieto's failed Twitter PR stunt is the latest blunder to hit the Mexican presidential race, following claims that a live televised election debate on Sunday was scripted to stop party candidates from fluffing their lines.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, the three speakers - Josefina Vazquez Mota (candidate for the incumbent conservative National Action Party), left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and Nieto - were told what they would be asked in advance and how long they had to talk on each topic.

Aldo Muñoz, a political analyst at Mexico State's Autonomous University, told the paper: "Everyone talked about what they wanted... None of the issues were talked about with profundity. So the one who wins the debate is the one who was ahead in the first place."

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