MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Saturday that he can not congratulate a winner of the U.S. presidential election until all legal proceedings are concluded, calling his decision “politically prudent”.
Democrat Joe Biden won the election on Saturday after a victory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania put him over the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes. [nL1N2HT069}
“With regard to the U.S. election, we are going to wait until all the legal matters have been resolved,” Lopez Obrador said at a televised news conference.
The Mexican president himself contested two presidential elections he lost, in 2006 and 2012, before winning on his third bid in 2018.
In his remarks, Lopez Obrador said he had a good relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump and with former vice president Biden, who he said he had known for a decade.
Trump has filed a raft of lawsuits to challenge the results but elections officials in states across the country say there has been no evidence of significant fraud, and legal experts say Trump’s efforts are unlikely to succeed.
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
