Mexican presidential campaign heats up engines with protest and registration of favorite

Two weeks before the start of the presidential campaign in Mexicotens of thousands of opponents demonstrated this Sunday for a “free vote”, while the official leader Claudia Sheinbaum, favorite in the polls, formalized her candidacy.

Dressed in white and pink, the detractors of the leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador filled the Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City, on one side of which the National Palace (seat of government) is located.

“Our democracy is not touched,” read a banner displayed on the stage where several leaders gave speeches less than three months before the June 2 elections.

Meanwhile, Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old physicist and former mayor of the capital, registered her aspiration with the National Electoral Institute (INE) accompanied by hundreds of supporters.

”After 200 years of the Republic, a transformative woman will become president. “That is a symbol that we are leaving sexist Mexico behind,” stated the candidate, who also promised that she will not submit to “any economic, political or foreign power.”

The leader receives 64% of the preferences, according to a consolidated survey conducted by the firm Oraculus, which strengthens the possibility of a woman governing Mexico, the second largest Latin American economy after Brazil, for the first time.

”He has everything to win. It is already necessary for a prepared woman like her to win. She is going to take the country to a higher position on an economic, political, administrative, and social level,” Guadalupe Carreño, 54, told AFP at the INE.

In a distant second place, with 31% support, is the senator of indigenous origin Xóchitl Gálvez, candidate of a coalition of the traditional parties PRI, PAN and PRD, who is presented with a center-right proposal.

“Even court”

Although Mexican laws prohibit demonstrations in favor of candidates before the campaign, which will begin on March 1, this Sunday’s opposition protest brought together potential voters of Gálvez, 60 years old.

The call was promoted by half a dozen civil organizations that claim to have gathered citizens in a hundred locations in the country and some abroad to denounce the alleged illegal intervention of López Obrador in the campaign. “Today, from power, whoever came to that first floor, by the free will of the citizens, intends to destroy that staircase so that no one else can walk through it,” said Lorenzo Córdova, former head of the INE and main speaker of the demonstration.

“The reforms that the president sent (to Congress) attack independent institutions (…), it is necessary to come and defend them,” justified Jorge Reyes, an 18-year-old student, in statements to AFP.

It refers to a package of government amendments that propose everything from an increase in pensions to the elimination of decentralized organizations.

López Obrador, whose popularity exceeds 60%, considered the call as a “demonstration to defend corruption” and questioned whether its organizers care about democracy.

Insufficient strategy

The organizers allege that the government makes propaganda, diverts resources and uses the beneficiaries of its vast social programs to favor Sheinbaum, who this Sunday denounced the “falsehood and hypocrisy” of these leaders.

”They march for democracy when at the time they promoted electoral fraud or never saw the purchase of votes or they forgot to respect indigenous peoples by promoting discrimination and classism,” he said.

For political analyst Fernando Dworak, the opposition mobilization was limited because its only concrete cause is “anti-Obradorism,” but it does not offer a clear or attractive proposal compared to that of the current government.

Dworak believes that Gálvez needs more than “anti-Obradorism” to win over voters who reject the continuity that Sheinbaum represents, but also do not want “the return of traditional parties.”

A third candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizen Movement party (center-left), is third by gathering 5% of the preferences, according to Oraculus.