Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto has vowed to deliver "results" after the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was swept back into power on July 1 on a tide of voter frustration at weak economic growth and drug-related violence.
Peña Nieto, who will take power on December 1, has promised to improve security and boost economic growth to six percent a year, partly by opening state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to private and foreign investment, liberalizing the country's labor laws and expanding the tax base to increase government revenues.
The official count shows Peña Nieto won more than 38 percent of the votes, putting him well ahead of his two main rivals: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), who got more than 31 percent of the vote, and Josefina Vazquez Mota of sitting President Felipe Calderon's center-right National Action Party (PAN), who received around 25 percent.
But the PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000, when it was unseated by the PAN, could struggle to get the reforms passed into law, with early results indicating the center-left party is likely to lose its majority in Congress.
Despite this challenging outlook, Credit Suisse analyst Alonso Cervera remains optimistic that Mexico's incoming administration will deliver on this ambitious reform agenda.
"We are encouraged ... by the strong discipline this party has shown in Congress over time," he wrote in a recent research note.
Throughout the campaign Peña Nieto was the favorite, with voter surveys consistently giving the telegenic and charismatic candidate a comfortable, double-digit lead over his competitors.
But he was also dogged by several political scandals that only served to fuel suspicion that the PRI - the target of allegations of corruption and economic mismanagement during its more than seven decades in power - had not changed.
During his victory speech last week, Peña Nieto stressed that the current PRI was a "new generation" and would not "return to the past."
It was a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail - and it seemed to do the trick.
