Viewpoint: Doubts about Mexico's new leader

Mexico’s outgoing president, Felipe Calderón, was never much loved. But there also isn’t much enthusiasm about what comes next.

The incoming president, Enrique Peña Nieto, a former state governor with a pretty-boy image, represents a restoration of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country between 1929 and 2000 through a mixture of repression, corruption, co-option and vote-fixing.

The novelty is that Peña Nieto was fairly elected, albeit with only 38 percent of the vote in a three-way race.

A good many people on the left and right fear that the PRI’s authoritarian instincts will soon resurface. Peña Nieto, 46, insists that his party has embraced the new rules of the game, Alan Riding writes.

Source: New York Times