[JURIST] The electoral victory of Enrique Pena Nieto [official website, in Spanish] of the Mexico’s ruling party Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) [party website, in Spanish] was confirmed by a final vote count on Friday. Nieto, however, is still facing legal challenges [JURIST report] brought by his opponent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [official website, in Spanish] of the left wing party Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD) [party website, in Spanish]. Obrador came in second 6.62 percent behind Nieto, who won the election with 38.21 percent of the vote. The numbers were confirmed after the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) [official website, in Spanish] recounted around half of results from the election’s 143,132 polling stations. The newly elected Nieto was accused of having bought votes by distributing 1.8 million gift cards that amounted to billions of pesos.

A similar tension between presidential candidates occurred in 2006 when the incumbent Mexican president Vicente Fox [Britannica profile] was blocked [JURIST report] from delivering the traditional state of the nation address before the country’s Congress [official website, in Spanish] by protesting leftist lawmakers supporting presidential candidate Obrador. In August the country’s Federal Electoral Tribunal (FET) [official website, in Spanish] rejected most challenges dismissing fraud allegations brought by Obrador who filed over 200 separate complaints challenging the preliminary vote count [JURIST reports]. During the same month supporters of Obrador had gathered outside of the FET to protest the court’s decision not to hold a full recount [JURIST reports] of July’s election.