Massive resignation of militants and four senators exacerbates the crisis of the traditional Mexican party

The crisis facing the old Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) It worsened on Monday after the resignation of hundreds of its members and four senators, making the organization the fourth political force in the Senate.

Between strong questions to the leadership of the PRI, the senators Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, Eruviel Ávila Villegas and Nuvia Mayorga Delgadotogether with a hundred militants, announced their disassociation from the party that has suffered a severe blow last month in the regional elections after losing the governorship of the State of Mexico, the most populous entity in the country that was the stronghold of the centenary organization .

The PRI, founded in 1929, was the hegemonic party in Mexico for seven decades, holding the presidency uninterruptedly from 1929 to 2000. It managed to govern again between 2012 and 2018.

The four senators announced the formation of the opposition movement Congruencia por México.

“Today with sadness but in an act of consistency I announce our resignation from the Institutional Revolutionary Party”, Osorio Chong told the press when formalizing, together with his colleagues, the decision that he assured would generate an impact within the party.

“We have to act based on our principles, but also to externalize inconsistency, lack of results, as well as the submission of those who think differently.”said the senator when directly accusing the president of the PRI, Alejandro Morenoof the crisis that the party has been dragging since 2018 due to the loss of key governorships and local congresses.

He told him to take care of “only for their own interests, their ambition”.

Osorio Chong demanded the resignation of Moreno last year and then supported Ruiz Massieu to change the internal statutes and shorten the term of the party president, a proposal that did not prosper but exposed the severe internal crisis of the organization.

With the resignation of Osorio Chong, Ruiz Massieu, Ávila Villegas and Mayorga Delgado, he PRI becomes the fourth political force in the Senate with nine members, surpassed by the small party Movimiento Ciudadano which has twelve senators. Until then, it was the third.

The defeat in the elections to the state of Mexico, which passed into the hands of the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), the PRI saw its presence reduced to only two states, Coahuila and Durango, after having seventeen governorships in 2018.

The PRI president reacted by questioning the outgoing figures and affirmed that they did it “because they know that in this party there is no more first and second class militants, and to give space to those who blackmail and never work for the militancy.”

Moreno took the opportunity to question López Obrador, whom he pointed out as “resort to the lowest maneuvers” to weaken the PRI and the opposition alliance ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

The deepening of the crisis of the old party occurs in the midst of the process carried out by the opposition coalition, made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the PRI, to choose the candidate who will compete in the 2024 presidential elections.