PAN candidate shakes up election in Mexico Members of Mexico's ruling conservative party have selected Josefina Vázquez Mota to be their candidate for July's presidential election, making the 51-year-old economist the first woman to lead one of the country's main political parties in a presidential campaign. Ms Vázquez Mota of the country's National Action party (PAN) will face tough opposition from at least two other parties. The mother of three comfortably beat Santiago Creel, a former interior minister, and Ernesto Cordero, a former finance minister, after party members cast their votes on Sunday. Late that evening, Ms Vázquez Mota, a former minister for social development and education, addressed jubilant supporters and declared triumphantly: "I will become the first woman president of Mexico." For that to happen, she will have to make up a lot of ground between now and July 1, when Mexicans will vote for president and new members of congress. A bloody offensive against the country's rich and well-armed drugs cartels, and in which an estimated 50,000 people have been killed over the past five years, has negatively affected the PAN's popularity, political scientists say. In addition, mediocre economic growth since the party won the presidency for the first time in 2000, and a failure to push through structural reforms considered central to increasing the country's growth potential, have made many Mexicans turn to the other parties. The main beneficiary has been the centrist Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which governed Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years until finally losing the presidency in 2000. Frustrated by the relative lack of progress since the country's transition to democracy since the PRI lost power, a growing number of people now associate it nostalgically with the party that "knew how to get things done." As a result, and according to a recent opinion poll, Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI's young and popular presidential candidate, leads his closest rival by almost 20 percentage points with 41 per cent of the vote. The same poll put Ms Vázquez Mota second with 23 per cent and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the experienced and charismatic candidate for several leftwing parties, third with 18 per cent. On Sunday the PAN nominee seemed unfazed by the task ahead. "We are beginning a new path," she said. It is a path to defeat the real adversary of Mexico, who embodies authoritarianism and the worst anti-democratic practices, who represents a return to corruption and offers impunity as a conviction. The adversary is Peña Nieto and his party. For many observers that was a clear indication that Ms Vázquez Mota intends to wage a tough and combative campaign against her adversaries over the coming months. By contrast, Mr Peña Nieto, who has vowed to ground his forthcoming campaign on policy issues rather than insults, wrote on his Twitter account, "Congratulations, and welcome to the democratic process."