Mexican ruling party wins elections amid violence

June 8th, 2015 (VOA) Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and his allies retained a slim working majority Monday in the lower house of Congress following mid-term elections.

The run-up to Sunday’s poll was marked by violence, with drug cartels blamed for the deaths of several candidates.

Mid-term elections usually draw a light turnout, but attention was unusually high this time as a loose coalition of radical teachers’ unions and activists vowed to block the vote. Ballot boxes were burned or stolen Sunday in the restive states of Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

The teachers’ demands included huge wage increases, an end to teacher testing and the safe return of 42 missing students from a radical teachers’ college. Those students disappeared in September, and prosecutors say they were killed and incinerated by a drug gang. Only one student’s remains were identified by DNA testing.

Eighty million registered voters were eligible to select the lower house of Congress, hundreds of mayors and nine governors.

The newly elected governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon was a big winner after Sunday’s vote.  Jaime Rodriguez Calderon, known as “el Bronco,” became the first independent candidate to be elected governor since electoral reform last year.  Sunday’s poll was the first election in Mexico to allow unaffiliated candidates.