Mexicans vote: 4 key reforms the next president must tackle

"Mexico has not lived up to [its]  potential," says Lorenzo Lazo, a political analyst in Mexico City who served in several PRI administrations. And if it is going to, here are the key reforms the next leader must tackle, according to observers  across the political spectrum:

Can corruption be cleaned up?

Corruption is deeply entrenched in Mexico and affects everything from its efficacy in battling violence to improving education and ultimately its growth. Examples are endless: Policemen were recently caught on tape kidnapping men in western Mexico who ended up dead the next day; a 2011 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report on Mexico shows the average household spends almost one-third of its budget on products that hail from “monopolistic or highly oligopolistic markets.”

“There needs to be a national crusade to clean up government at the federal and local levels,” says John Ackerman, a law expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “This has been the real failure with Mexico’s transition to democracy.”

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