Xóchitl Gálvez embodies the return of the Mexican opposition to the political scene

The Mexican opposition, which in recent years has continued to lose political weight and was without a clear head, is back and its face is that of Xochitl Galvez.

“Today there is opposition”affirmed the 60-year-old engineer and senator when staging that return on Sunday, when she received the certificate as presidential candidate of the great opposition coalition, formed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the conservative National Action (PAN) and the historically leftist PRD with a view to the June 2024 elections.

The ruling party, Morena, has not stopped advancing since Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to power in 2018. It now controls Congress and the government of 22 of the country’s 32 states.

That is why Gálvez recalled that although only a few months ago “the question was not if we were going to win, but by how many points they were going to defeat us”, now there has been a “return to pessimism” and “Hope changed sides.”

“Here is the opposition”she stressed, flanked by the leaders of the coalition parties and by highly symbolic civil society figures, such as Ceci Flores, a mother who leads one of the many groups that search for the more than 110,000 disappeared people in Mexico.

“I Xóchitl Gálvez, of ñähñu origin, from Tepatepec, Hidalgo (central Mexico) accept with great pride the honor of completing the efforts of the Broad Front for Mexico”he stated.

And that aspiration is to reach the presidency even though the ruling party, which on Wednesday will announce who will represent it in the elections, starts as the great favorite.

Gálvez, a woman of humble origins who later became a businesswoman and who has held various public positions until reaching the Senate, has brought fresh air to Mexican politics in recent months with her straightforward way of expressing herself, but her objective will not be easy. In addition to being the focus of criticism from President López Obrador, she will have to lead with a coalition where parties of very different origins are mixed, united only by their opposition to Morena.

On Sunday, she devoted her speech to asking for the support of all the most stigmatized sectors of power, appealing to her political independence —although she is backed by the PAN, she does not formally belong to that party— and with phrases that, paradoxically, made it inevitable to recall some of those used by the now president when he was on campaign.

“We are going to open the doors of the National Palace”said, “they closed it for all those who do not think like them”. And, as he added, his golden rule will be: “Neither jerks, nor thieves, nor assholes.”

He launched appeals to the indigenous people, to the women “because I am one of you (and) I will defend your life and your integrity as my own”to the middle class, to academics and also to sectors that have not only been criticized, but assassinated, such as environmentalists and journalists, whose work —he said of the latter— “It is essential for democracy.”

“I want a Mexico free from the fear that crime causes”he declared.

As an engineer that she is, she insisted that problems are not fixed with ideologies but with solutions and listening more than talking. “If it works, we’ll leave it, if it could be better, we’ll improve it and if it doesn’t work, we’ll change it”.

The ruling party plans to announce on September 6 the name of who will compete against Gálvez when a series of polls has been completed. If the polls carried out by the Mexican press are confirmed, the favorite is the former head of government of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum, which could mean that for the first time, the two main contenders for the presidency of Mexico were women.

Source: AP