Mexican president withholding congratulations until US election challenges are settled

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Saturday he would not congratulate a winner of the U.S. presidential election until all legal challenges have been concluded.

“With regard to the U.S. election, we are going to wait until all the legal matters have been resolved,” López Obrador said, according to Reuters. “I can’t congratulate one candidate or the other. I want to wait until the electoral process is over.”

President-elect Joe Biden was projected to be the winner of the election seconds after a new batch of votes was announced in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The Trump campaign filed a series of lawsuits in key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania in which Biden is in the lead.

Mexico is the largest trade partner the U.S. has, Reuters noted, with more than $600 billion worth of commerce exchanged between the two countries each year. Mexico’s economic relationship with the U.S. is its most important.

López Obrador took a different stance when Bolivia’s election of Evo Morales was brought into dispute, Reuters reported, congratulating Morales upon his apparent win.

“Bolivia doesn’t have a 3,000-km border with Mexico. It’s important to have a couple of months of peace and good neighborly relations,” a Mexican official said.

Other world leaders have congratulated Biden on his projected win, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.