* Incoming Mexican government says to target corruption
* Senior lawmaker says new watchdog to be one of first
reforms
* New Mexican Congress to convene on Sept. 1
MEXICO CITY, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Creating an anti-corruption
authority and extending the powers of an existing transparency
watchdog will be among the first projects Mexico's Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) party will bring to Congress, a senior
party figure said on Thursday.
The PRI, whose candidate Enrique Pena Nieto won the
presidential elections on July 1, will return to power on
December 1. The party, often accused of corruption, ruled Mexico
for 71 years until 2000.
Pena has said that he wants to create an entity that could
hear corruption complaints not only on a federal level, as
currently happens before Mexico's federal attorney general, but
also on a state and municipal level.
"It's a demand from society that will, as a priority, have
to be a part of the legislative agenda of the parliamentary
group of the PRI," Manlio Fabio Beltrones told Reuters on
Thursday after he was named the PRI's leader in the lower house.
Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
has accused Pena Nieto and the PRI of buying votes and money
laundering. He is seeking to have the election annulled and has
challenge the result before an electoral tribunal.
The PRI does not have an absolute majority in the new
congress, which will begin business on September 1.
The house will likely begin studying the proposals before
the end of September, Beltrones added.
Pena has also promised to bring fiscal, energy and labor
reforms before Congress, but these will likely come after the
corruption and transparency proposals, since the lower house
will review the 2013 budget proposal from December 15 and that
must be approved by December 31.
(Reporting by Anahi Rama; Writing by Elinor Comlay; Editing by
Anthony Boadle)