PRI candidate makes waves in Mexico The crowds have gathered in Mexico's second-largest city and the chanting has begun. One last brush of the shirt, one last whisper to an aide, and Enrique Peña Nieto steps out into the midnight air of Guadalajara to launch his bid for the presidency. "To those who yearn for a change in our country, I say to you, good morning!" he proclaims with a raised hand to thousands of people crammed into the city's Liberation Square. It has just gone 12.01am on Friday, the official start of Mexico's presidential campaign, and it is a moment the candidate for the opposition and centre-left Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has long been waiting for. The clean-cut 45-year-old former governor of the State of Mexico, the country's largest, lives for politics. Strangely for a Mexican, Mr Peña Nieto does not like football. He listens to music rarely and it has become obvious, in particular thanks to one well-publicised gaffe at a book fair in which he struggled to name three books that had influenced him, that he finds reading a chore. But give him a stage and he looks perfectly at home. Last week, Agustín Carstens, the governor of the central bank, took the unusual step of weighing in to the election campaign by saying that the four presidential candidates needed to focus on reforms to boost Mexico's economic growth rate. These included opening up state-owned oil company Pemex to more private investment, relaxing labour laws to boost formal employment and increasing competition in Mexico's oligopoly-dominated domestic economy. Mr Peña Nieto has floated all of these possibilities. But a common question is whether he would make good on his rhetoric if he wins - especially as the PRI has spent much of the past 12 years in opposition blocking similar initiatives made by the ruling PAN party. "I will visit every state and I will make firm commitments," he says to crowd in Liberation Square. You know that I will honour them. An opinion poll this week gave Mr Peña Nieto a double-digit lead over his closest rival ahead of the July 1 election. An average of six leading polls in March puts Josefina Vázquez Mota of the ruling and conservative National Action Party (PAN) more than 14 points adrift with 24.7 per cent. Victory would hand Mr Peña Nieto's PRI the prize it has been dreaming of since 2000, when it lost power after 71 years of consecutive rule. Back then, as voters tired of one-party rule and held the widespread perception that the PRI was synonymous with corruption and election-rigging, many political analysts considered that prospect almost impossible. But watching Mr Peña Nieto from back stage, it almost seemed as if the party had never left office. "I will work so that 15m Mexicans lift themselves from poverty," he said. We will triple the rate of economic growth over the past decade. As the state capital of Jalisco, the country's premiere Tequila-producing region, Guadalajara provided Mr Peña Nieto with a quintessentially Mexican backdrop. But it was also a bold choice given that Jalisco has been a stronghold for the governing PAN for more than a decade - a sign of Mr Peña Nieto's confidence in taking on the ruling party. While the official election campaign has only just begun, Mr Peña Nieto has not shied from staking out policy positions. In October last year, he told the FT that he would work to open Pemex, the state oil company to private investment - an unthinkable proposal six years ago. There was more on offer in Guadalajara. Among them was a proposal to eliminate 100 of the lower house of Congress's 500 seats to make the legislative process quicker and more efficient; and one to create a National Anti-corruption Commission to investigate citizen's complaints of public officials. Those ideas went down well with María De Jesus Ornelas, who went to the launch. "It was wonderful," said the 77-year-old resident of Guadalajara. I think I'm going to see my party in the presidency again.