08-06-2017: Latin American Weekly Report

How quickly things change. This time last year Mexico’s right-wing Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) appeared to have been vaulted into contention for the presidency in 2018 after winning seven state governor- ships and reducing the federally ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to fewer than half of the country’s 32 federal entities for the first time in its history. The PAN’s new young president, Ricardo Anaya, was hailed as the mastermind of the success. Fast-forward a year and the PAN has been thumped in the gubernatorial contest in Mexico’s most populous state, Estado de México (Edomex), despite fielding one of its biggest hitters, and plunged into disunity, with calls for Anaya to go. The PRI’s hegemony in Edomex endured but it was a Pyrrhic victory, where the biggest winner, paradoxically, suffered the most painful loss: Andrés Manuel López Obrador.