(Mexico City) The left-wing party in power in Mexico consolidated its hegemony by winning a historic election on Sunday in the most populous state in the country, just over a year from the next presidential election.
The Movement for National Regeneration (Morena) snatched the post of governor in the State of Mexico, on the outskirts of the capital, bastion for more than 90 years of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which long reigned unchallenged over the political life of the country.
Buoyed by the popularity of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Morena’s candidate Delfina Gomez is nine points ahead of her PRI rival Alejandra del Moral, according to the first partial results from the National Electoral Institute (INE). .
“You have decided that it is time for the process of transformation that our country is going through to take root in our state,” said Delfina Gomez, a 60-year-old teacher, who leads a coalition called “Together We Do history “.
“It’s time for change,” rejoices Jorge Alvarado, a 50-year-old shoe shiner and supporter of the Morena party, which is trying to reduce social inequalities.
The PRI candidate acknowledged her opponent’s “triumph” in a brief statement. The PRI presented itself in alliance with the PAN (liberal right) and the PRD (center left) mainly.
New hegemony
With this victory, Lopez Obrador’s movement confirms its new hegemony just over a year before the presidential election scheduled for mid-2024.
Arrived at the head of the federal presidency in 2018, Morena governs 22 of the 32 states of the federation, alone or with his allies, not counting the election on Sunday.
The challenge now is to know who will represent Morena in the presidential election of 2024 to try to take over from Lopez Obrador, limited by the Constitution to a single six-year term and who will therefore not be able to stand again.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum are the favorites in an internal primary whose organization is due to begin in the coming weeks.
With his victory in the historic stronghold of the PRI, Morena also confirms the decline of the all-powerful ex-party, which had ruled Mexico unchallenged from 1930 to 2000, then from 2012 to 2018.
The PRI, which won all the elections in the past, had been described as a “perfect dictatorship” by the Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa.
A total of 12.6 million voters were registered for Sunday’s election, for a turnout of between 48.7 and 50.2%, according to partial results from the INE.
With 17 million inhabitants – as many as the Netherlands, more than Quebec or Belgium – the State of Mexico sums up all the contrasts of the country, like a “mini-Republic”, according to political scientist Miguel Tovar from Alterpraxis.
The state is one of the most violent in the country, especially in the towns adjoining the capital, which is becoming gentrified in places, while counting an important industrial fabric (Ford, Nestlé). Its economy represents 9.1% of the national GDP.
Elections were also held on Sunday in the mining state of Coahuila (north).
The PRI would keep control of this state bordering the United States, with 57% of the vote for its candidate Manolo Jimenez, according to the partial results of the INE.
Morena appeared there in scattered order with the dissident candidacy of a former secretary of state in the government of Lopez Obrador.