Having been in Mexico for exactly two weeks, we're still very much in the learning curve in understanding this new nation and culture. Mexico held its presidential election this past Sunday and it was amazingly close. In this country of 103 million (the world's most populous Spanish-speaking one), 41 million citizens voted and this was the outcome:
Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN), the candidate on the political right, got 35.89 percent of the vote while his opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) ended up with 35.31 percent. Now that's a close election.
Generally speaking, the wealthy and middle class support Calderon and the nation's poor support Obrador. This political division between rich and poor is only exacerbated by the outcome of the election - Obrador's supporters will, because of the incredible closeness of the results, believe that the election was robbed from their candidate by the ruling party (Calderon is of the same party as current president Vicente Fox), and Calderon, as the next president, surely knows he does not have a mandate from the people to govern - something he'll definitely have to earn. We're praying for this country and for God to bring healing to these political and class divisions that the election has brought to the surface.
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