Enrique Peña Nieto is the 57th President of Mexico, in office since 2012. Prior to becoming the president he served as governor of the State of Mexico from 2005 to 2011 and announced his presidential candidacy just a few days after leaving office as governor. He is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the largest political party in the country which had governed Mexico uninterrupted for 71 years until it was defeated by the National Action Party (PAN) in 2000. Since PRI’s regime was marred by corruption, Peña Nieto’s election in 2012 which marked the return of the PRI after a hiatus of 12 years was met with widespread protests across the nation. The newly elected president, however, assured the citizens that his government would be much more democratic, modern and open to criticism. Interested in politics from childhood, Peña Nieto ventured into politics shortly before he qualified as a lawyer. The ambitious young man formally started his career as the Secretary of the Citizen Movement of Zone I of the State Directive Committee of the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP), one of the three sectors of the PRI. He steadily rose through the ranks over the ensuing years to eventually become the President of Mexico on 1 December 2012.