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Polls Open as Mexico Prepares to Elect a New President

by VOA News

   Polls have opened in Mexico Sunday morning, where the country's
   population is voting to replace outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto.

   Mexico will be electing a new president as well as 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 build up to Sunday's vote.

   Polls consistently show the veteran leftist politician Andres Manuel
   Lopez Obrador, widely known as AMLO, with a double-digit lead.

   Lopez Obrador, 64, who got his start in politics decades ago advocating
   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 Registration Movement (MORENA),
   which is running in coalition with the left-wing Labor Party and
   right-wing Social Encounter Party.

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

   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 President Enrique Peña 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 Peña Nieto's six years were marked by social and
   economic turmoil.