Mexico’s increasingly powerful ruling party will know its candidate on September 6 for the presidential election scheduled for mid-2024, after five opinion “surveys” of the four main contenders for the succession of the very popular President Andres Manuel López Obrador.
The calendar accelerated on Sunday when the Morena party (Movement for National Regeneration, nationalist left) set the rules to decide between the two favorites, the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard.
These two candidates for the nomination will have to declare themselves by Friday and resign from their mandates, according to the agreement unanimously approved by the National Council in their presence.
Figure of Mexico abroad, Marcelo Ebrard has already announced that he will leave his post on Monday to go “to meet the citizens and citizens”.
Favorite of the polls, the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, who wants to become the first president of Mexico, had not indicated a date for leaving her post at the head of the capital of nine million inhabitants.
Interior Minister Adán Augusto López, a native of Tabasco (South) like the outgoing president, and Morena’s strongman in the Senate David Monreal, are also in the running, as well as probably two representatives of allied parties.
The upcoming campaign is crucial and could designate the favorite for the next presidential election.
Facing the opposition without a real leader, the current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador remains very popular after four and a half years in office. The Constitution prohibits him from standing for re-election after a single six-year term, much to the chagrin of some of his supporters.
His Morena party governs 22 of the country’s 32 states. Morena consolidated his hegemony a week ago by winning the election to the post of governor in the State of Mexico (outskirts of the capital), the most populous of the 32 entities (17 million inhabitants) and stronghold of the former dominant party PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) for 90 years.
After traveling the country from June 19 to August 27, the candidates for Morena’s nomination will be decided by five opinion polls between August 28 and September 3, one organized by the party and four others by private companies. , according to the document read by the President of the National Council, Alfonso Durazo.
The survey will not ask respondents who their favorite candidate is, but rather their perception of each of them (honesty, proximity, knowledge of the country, etc.), according to the press.
The losers will have to “support the winner”, adds the agreement, as if to avoid any dissenting candidacy or rallying to the opposition of one of the three losers.
06/12/2023 08:17:01 – Mexico (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
