Friday 6 July 2012

Peru opens Saudi embassy

Peru has opened an embassy in Saudi Arabia, with a view to boosting political and economic ties with the oil-producing kingdom; the mission's first official act was to receive on 3 July the visiting deputy-foreign minister of Peru José Beraún Araníbar. Eduardo Martinetti was to be Peru's first ambassador. Beraún was in the kingdom to extend an invitation for the third heads-of-state Summit of South American-Arab Countries, scheduled for 1-2 Octobre 2012, the foreign ministry stated.

PRI retains lead in Mexico's contested vote

Mexico's authorities confirmed on 5 July that Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) won the presidential elections of 1 July, even as the second candidate, leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, threatened to challenge the entire election process, Reuters reported on 6 July. With 99.53 per cent of the votes counted on 5 July, Peña Nieto had won 38.21 per cent of the votes and López Obrador 31.57 per cent, Reuters reported. The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) reportedly completed by the afternoon of 5 July recounting more than half the votes as promised earlier. But López Obrador's Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) challenged the election on 6 July and a party spokesman said the PRD would formally ask the country's supreme electoral arbiter TEPJF (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación) on 12 July to cancel it. The party would present evidence of violations, which it claims have nullified the polls' validity. The student movement Yo Soy 132 separately stated on 5 July that it had some 1,100 complaints about the electoral process compiled in 70 pages and 45 videos, and would present them to the IFE and the court dealing with electoral violations, EFE reported. The conservative candidate who came third with over 25 per cent of votes, Josefina Vázquez Mota, accepted the results on 5 July but said unfair conditions had influenced the outcome, EFE and Infolatam reported. She said in Mexico City that opinion polls before the elections that gave Peña Nieto a decisive lead had amounted to "propaganda" and conditions of "inequity" before and during campaigning shaped the results.