On Opening Day for Mexico Elections, One Candidate’s Vast Coalition Makes Him the Guy to Beat

MEXICO CITY - Victor Hugo de la Rosa is the type of voter that presidential candidates are desperate for - the one still struggling to make a decision.Since the year 2000 he’s voted for historic change promised by the National Action Party, or PAN, in Mexico. In 2012, disillusioned, he returned to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, hoping the government would restore stability and stop drug-related bloodshed that has plagued the nation.Instead, the violence worsened. Today, weeks before the election, he doesn’t believe any of what the four viable candidates say, nor does he trust them. But despite his fading hope in Mexico’s democracy, he plans to vote. Now he’s motivated more by anger -- at the brazen corruption, unending drug violence, insecurity and mass disappearances -- than hope.“The more I look at my options, listen to their promises, the angrier I become because they all sound the same,” said De la Rosa, 53, an electrician who also works as an Uber driver to make ends meet. He doesn’t plan to make a decision until election day when “I think I will make a sign of the cross, vote and wish for the best outcome.”On July 1st, millions of Mexicans will head to the polls to elect their next president, 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 128 members of the Senate. Their faith in Mexico’s fragile institutions and its fledgling democracy -- the nation was ruled by the PRI, for about 70 years before the 2000 elections -- has been all but shattered, according to analysts and recent studies.  Continue reading...