Obama's New Alter-EGO South of de Border

Who is Enrique Pena Nieto?  This year he is the leading candidate in the race for theGringo Obama office of the Mexican President of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.  He will be the important and influential leader to partner with the United States to control the US/Mexico border and develop programs to manage the drug cartels and corruption along with the terrorist threats too.  His inexperience along with no practical knowledge in running a major economy is extremely worrisome too.  Is this Enrique Pena Nieto another amateur like Obama?

Enrique Pena Nieto stumbles on way to Presidency

Leading the bid for Mexico's President is Pena Nieto, until September the governor of Enrique Pena Nieto & Angelica Rivera Mexico state, the nation's most populous. With other parties divided, smarting or in disarray, Pena Nieto has seemed unbeatable. For months, the election of Pena Nieto as a candidate of the PRI party had taken on an air of near-inevitability. The handsome politician with the TV star wife consistently leads polls by seemingly insurmountable margins. Pena Nieto's youthful appeal is meant to target a new generation of voters with little memory of the PRI's dark past. His party, the PRI, has won several governorships and legislative offices to rebuild a formidable party machinery and push laws favoring its election bid. 

But with the campaign now taking shape in earnest, Pena Nieto has stumbled badly in a series of embarrassing, well-publicized gaffes that raise questions about his mettle as a candidate.

For instance, in December 2011 the man who would be the next president of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, was not off to a good start. His troubles started immediately at the renowned International Book Fair in Guadalajara, where he was presenting his own book, "Mexico: The Great Hope." 

Asked to name three books that had influenced him, the candidate hesitated, stammered and looked to aides for help. Struggling, he eventually said he had read "parts of" the Bible. Then he named a Mexican work of fiction from the last decade, "La Silla del Aguila" (The Eagle's Throne), but got the author wrong. He attributed it to a leading historian, Enrique Krauze, but it was written by Mexico's most famous living novelist, Carlos Fuentes.

But amid his stumbles, Enrique Pena Nieto has shown no ability to improvise and muster a quick comeback to rescue himself. "What happens is when I read books, the titles don't always stick," Pena Nieto said by way of explanation. The flub went viral, and Pena Nieto quickly became the butt of many a joke among rivals, on social networks and in the media being compared with Texas Governor Rick Perry's "Oops!" memory lapse during the Republican Primary debates.

Presidential Candidate Enrique Pena NietoMexicans will vote in July to replace President Felipe Calderon, whose six-year term has been plagued by violence and drug cartel warfare that have left as many as 50,000 people dead. Many voters are looking for a change. Calderon is barred by law from seeking reelection.

Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, while maintaining that it has reformed from its corrupt ways of drug dealing, kidnapping, murder and pay-offs while they ruled Mexico with an iron fist for seven decades until being unseated from the presidency in 2000, the PRI has now positioned itself to return to power.  

FYI:  The Political Parties in Mexico

Mexico has a multi-party system, which means that there are more than two dominant political parties. In Mexico there are three large political parties the PRI, the PAN, and the PRD. Other smaller political parties survive in isolation or by forming local coalitions with any of the big three. Following the 2003 election, Mexico had six nationally recognized political parties. National recognition was given to those parties that secured representation in Congress. In terms of their congressional representation and share of the national vote, only the PRI, the PAN and the PRD can be considered major parties. Under Mexican law, parties are listed in the order in which they were first registered:

		PAN National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional) - a right of center party. It is the party of incumbent President Vicente Fox and current president-elect Felipe Calderón. After the 2006 general election it became the largest party in Congress. More About PAN >>
		PRI Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) - the dominating party, under different names, at the local, state, and national levels for most of the 20th century. Although a part of the Socialist International, it is most often perceived as left of center... More About PRI >>
		PRD Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) - a left of center party. Born as "Democratic Front", a splinter group of the PRI, in the 1988 elections. Its first candidate and founder, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, lost the 1988 presidential election under dubious circumstances... More About PRD >>

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