Source: Al Jazeera
Former Mexico City mayor, whose narrow defeat in 2006 triggered protests, chosen as leftist candidate for 2012 election.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, will again run for the Mexican presidency in 2012 after his narrow loss in the 2006 election sparked massive protests.
The 58-year-old beat the current mayor of the capital in a poll of 6,000 supporters of left-wing parties on Tuesday.
“We kept our promise that the leftist candidate would be the one who was best placed,” Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday at a joint news conference with Marcelo Ebrard, his rival for the nomination.
“The left divided will just fall into the precipice. I accept the results of this poll,” Ebrard, who has long expressed presidential ambitions, said.
Lopez Obrador, who represents the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), led a long, unsuccessful fight to dispute the results of the last election, which he lost by less than one percentage point.
Lopez Obrador will also have support from three other leftist movements, after a polling process aiming to choose a unity candidate among rival factions.
The PRD was the first of three major parties to pick a candidate for the July 2012 presidential election.