Mexico Court Rejects Presidential Vote Challenge Juan Montes and Anthony Harrup - WSJ.com
go to original August 31, 2012

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's top electoral court turned down Thursday a legal bid by a left-wing coalition to annul the July 1 presidential election, upholding the vote and paving the way for the winner, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, to take office Dec. 1 for a six-year term.

The decision, widely expected, was a setback for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the populist former Mexico City mayor who came in second place in the election and cried foul, arguing that Mr. Peña Nieto's PRI party used large-scale vote buying and broke campaign spending limits, among other things.

The Federal Electoral Tribunal rejected the legal challenge presented by Mr. López Obrador's coalition, which sought to annul the election.

The justices said the coalition didn't prove vote-buying, and rejected allegations by the leftist coalition that television coverage and polling companies were illegally biased in favor of the winner.

The judges also said it was premature to affirm that the PRI breached spending rules using illegal funds, in part because campaign-spending audits haven't yet concluded.

"Given the lack of evidence, the will of the 50 million Mexicans who went to vote must prevail", said judge Salvador Nava. "We had free and democratic elections."

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@dowjones.com

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