MEXICO CITY – Enrique Pena Nieto took the oath of office as Mexico’s new president on Saturday, promising a list of specific reforms that are part old-party populist handouts to the poor and new assaults on the entrenched systems and sacred cows that have hampered the country’s development.
Pena Nieto, marking the return of the institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, promised everything from a new integrated program to prevent crime to ending the patronage and buying of teacher positions that rule the public education system and opening up broadband Internet service now dominated by just a few telecommunication monopolies.
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“It’s time to move Mexico and to achieve a national transformation,” Pena Nieto said. “This is the moment for Mexico.”
The return of the PRI after a 12-year hiatus started with violent confrontations in the streets and protest speeches from opposition parties inside the congress, where Pena Nieto took the oath of office. Protesters continued vandalizing downtown businesses, smashing plate glass windows and setting office furniture ablaze outside.
Protesters clashed with tear gas-wielding police, calling the inauguration of Pena Nieto an “imposition” of a party that ruled with a near-iron fist for 71 years using a mix of populist handouts, graft and rigged elections. At least two people were injured, one gravely, police said, and a police officer who was bleeding from the face was taken for medical treatment.
Leftist congress members inside the chamber gave protest speeches and hung banners, including a giant one reading, “Imposition consummated. Mexico mourns.”
“One word sums up Dec. 1: The restoration. The return to the past,” said Congressman Ricardo Monreal of the Citizens Movement party.
But PRI leaders denied that.
“This is a time of expectation, a time of hope,” said PRI Senator Omar Fayat. “What we did well in the previous government we will preserve and strengthen. What we didn’t, we will rebuild and reorient.”
Pena Nieto had taken over at midnight in a symbolic ceremony after campaigning as the new face of the PRI, repentant and reconstructed after being voted out of the presidency in 2000.
Pena Nieto has promised to govern democratically with transparency. But in announcing his Cabinet on Friday, he turned to the old guard as well as new technocrats to run his administration.
Pena Nieto has also promised to push for reforms that could bring major new private investment into Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, the crucial but struggling state-owned oil industry.
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