Mexico's 70-year ruling party back in power after election victory

The party that ruled Mexico for 70 years until 2000 has been re-elected under a charismatic young president married to a soap star.

Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party became a symbol of corruption and electoral fraud after seven decades in power.

But Mr Peña Nieto, 45, called his victory “a fiesta of democracy”, adding: “There is no return to the past. You have given our party a second chance and we will deliver results.”

Outgoing president Felipe Calderon congratulated Mr Peña Nieto and promised to work with him.

Mr Calderon’s National Action Party had been criticised over the stalling economy and drug-related violence in which 50,000 people have been killed since 2006.

The Electoral Institute said Mr Peña Nieto had won about 38 per cent of the vote with his main rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party on 31 per cent and Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action Party in third place with 25 per cent.

Mr Peña Nieto promised a government that would be democratic, modern and open to criticism.

He pledged to fight organised crime and said there would be no pacts with criminals in response to fears he would not support the US war on drug cartels.

“My gratitude is for the millions of Mexican who voted for me. I will work for all of Mexico ... I will govern for everyone,” he said.

Mr Peña Nieto, a lawyer with an MBA degree, was elected governor of the state of Mexico in 2005.

He has three children from his first marriage. His wife died from an epileptic seizure. His popularity soared when he married Angélica Rivera, 41, star of the hit Mexican soap Distilled Love.

He has admitted fathering two other children with different women. He was called the “candidate of Televisa”, the largest broadcaster in the Spanish-speaking world, for his frequent television appearances.

Mr Lopez Obrador today refused to concede defeat, saying he would wait for a full count. Mr Lopez Obrador took hundreds of thousands of supporters to the streets in protest when he narrowly lost in 2006.