16-06-2016: Latin American Weekly Report

Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto and the federally ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) have come out fighting in the wake of the worst set of results in the party’s history in gubernatorial, state legisla- tive and municipal elections on 5 June. Peña Nieto sought to regain the initiative immediately by urging congress to approve the necessary secondary legislation to get his government’s national anti-corruption system (SNA) off the ground; corruption is being seen as one of the principal causes of the PRI’s humbling electoral defeats. The federal attorney general’s office (PGR) then swooped on the figurehead of the longstanding teacher protests against the government’s education reform; Rubén Núñez was arrested on suspicion of misappropriating at least M$24m (US$1.3m).