The four candidates gathered Sunday night in Guadalajara for the second and final officially scheduled campaign debate, which was televised nationwide and also on Spanish-language television in the United States. The debate was the most widely televised in Mexico’s history, and a testament, say experts such as Jesus Velasco of Tarleton State University, to the country’s emerging democracy. The debate was also followed closely through social media.
The top two rivals – Enrique Pena Nieto of the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost by a narrow margin in 2006 – hoped to get a boost from the event that could take them over the top.
Both Pena Nieto and Lopez Obrador talked about the need to fight poverty, stimulate economic growth and recover Mexico's leading role in Latin America.
"There is a need for a new course that will translate into better living conditions for Mexicans," said the telegenic 45-year-old Pena Nieto, who now has a commanding lead with 43.6 per cent support in polls to Lopez Obrador's 29.2 per cent.
Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador urged his compatriots "to vote without fear for change."
The aftermath of the country’s violence — more than 50,000 people killed in less than six years — has affected both sides of the border, with businesses and residents packing and moving here and to other U.S. cities, including Dallas.
The economy and relations with the United States were highlights of the debate.
“We will convince the United States that the relationship will be founded on economic development, not military,” said Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, explaining that a prosperous Mexico means less illegal immigration.
Unlike a May 6 debate with a traditional format that allowed for very brief answers, this one let the candidates speak up to 8.5 minutes on several different subjects, the Federal Elections Board said.
The debate came at a critical time in the race, with just 20 days left before voters cast their ballots, and after weeks of student protests.
For weeks, students under the Yosoy132 ("I am the 132") youth movement have mobilised online and in the streets to slam favourable media coverage of Pena Nieto they say aims to make his win look inevitable, accusing the PRI candidate, who is married to an ex-soap opera star, of corruption.
The students cranked their campaign into high gear again Sunday, using social media to call supporters out to city squares to watch the debate, said Carlos Brito, a movement spokesman.
More than 90,000 movement supporters thronged the Zocalo, the capital's landmark main square, to rally against the PRI candidate. They were to march against Pena Nieto to the Angel of Independence monument.
The national movement, empowered by the use of social media, is also extending itself across the globe to Paris and Madrid and across the border to cities such as Chicago and El Paso, where Texas students are planning a protest in solidarity with their Mexican counterparts next week.
With three weeks before election day, polls show the race tightening, with security the overriding issue. All candidates have vowed to reduce the drug violence, but they have also backed away from the government’s tactic of aggressively tackling the drug cartels. Cutting the drug flow to the United States is not a priority; instead, they’re focusing on reducing the violence through measures such as tackling the poverty and social problems that lead people to join the drug cartels.
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