By Dave Graham
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Maverick Mexican senator Xochitl Galvez on Wednesday effectively secured the main opposition candidacy for next year’s presidential election after picking up the endorsement of a key party, which dumped its own contender.
In a surprise announcement, the head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico’s former rulers, said the PRI would back Galvez instead of its own hopeful, Beatriz Paredes.
Galvez is seen by many analysts as best placed to take on the electoral machine of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
But the manner of the PRI’s decision to abandon Paredes took the shine off what had appeared to be an imminent victory for Galvez in a vote due on Sunday to choose the opposition alliance’s presidential candidate.
Arguing that opinion polls showed Paredes – herself a senator and onetime leader of the PRI – was going to lose the Sunday vote, current PRI chairman Alejandro Moreno said his party now backed Galvez.
“Xochitl Galvez will have the complete support of the Institutional Revolutionary Party,” Moreno told a news conference, surrounded by somber-looking party colleagues.
Paredes was notably absent.
The decision to withdraw backing for Paredes angered some PRI supporters, while even some allies of Galvez feared her nomination would do little to inspire confidence that the public was picking the candidate.
“The best way of choosing the candidate is to let the voters decide,” said Fernando Belaunzaran, a former federal congressman for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the president’s previous outfit, now in the opposition alliance.
ENERGIZED OPPOSITION
A spirited, shrewd communicator with an irreverent sense of humor, Galvez represents the center-right National Action Party (PAN), a longtime rival, now ally, of the centrist PRI. The PRD had previously said it was backing Galvez.
She is widely viewed as the contender who could do most to threaten the iron hold Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) has on national politics, which has consigned the PRI, PAN and PRD to a string of heavy defeats.
Since entering the race in June, Galvez, 60, has energized the beleaguered opposition. On Wednesday, she praised Paredes, saying she did not want her pressured into quitting.
Renowned for her ebullience and adept at creating publicity, Galvez has crafted her pitch as one of triumph over adversity, describing how she became a successful entrepreneur after growing up in an impoverished family with indigenous roots.
In 2021, Galvez described her political origins as Marxist and Trotskyist, and argues she is less privileged than MORENA’s leading presidential contenders, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and a former foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard.
MORENA is due to announce its candidate on Sept. 6 after national polling, and with Sheinbaum leading voter surveys, expectations have been growing that the election in June could pave the way for Mexico’s first female president.
Expressing support for business even as Lopez Obrador has railed against corporate greed, Galvez boasts an appeal that can cut across class divides. Like the president, she also connects with poorer Mexicans better than many of her peers.
Some supporters have broadcast an AI version of Galvez, a trained computer engineer, to back her campaign. Lopez Obrador has sought to cast her as a tool of corrupt, rich elites.
The president’s popularity has been a mainstay of support for MORENA, consistently polling close to or above 60%. Under Mexican law, presidents can only serve a single six-year term.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; editing by Stephen Eisenhammer,Robert Birsel)
Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
