Mexico's Pena Nieto declared president

Enrique Pena Nieto was finally declared Mexico’s president-elect after a two-month legal fight, but his leftist rival refused to accept the result and called for a rally.

The federal electoral tribunal officially named Pena Nieto the winner of the July 1 election after dismissing a bid by leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to scrap the result over vote-buying claims.

The decision clears the way for Pena Nieto to begin his six-year term on December 1, marking the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the nation’s highest office after a 12-year absence.

Lopez Obrador claims that the PRI, which governed Mexico with an authoritarian grip from 1929 to 2000, bought five million votes and violated campaign spending rules in order to secure Pena Nieto’s victory. “The elections were neither clean nor free nor genuine, therefore I will not recognise an illegitimate administration that emerged from votes that were bought and other grave violations of the constitution,” he told reporters.