(Mexico) Founded barely seven years ago, the left-wing party in power in Mexico intends to strengthen its supremacy on Sunday during elections in six of the 32 states which concentrate many economic assets and major problems of insecurity. .
Posted at 3:12 p.m.
The campaign was not bloodied by candidate assassinations, unlike a year ago before the June 2021 legislative elections, which ultimately consolidated the base of President Andres Manuel’s National Regeneration Movement (Morena). Lopez Obrador (AMLO).
A Morena activist was assassinated on Sunday in Juchitan in the state of Oaxaca (southwest), several media reported, citing a press release from the prosecution which does not specify whether the assassination is linked to the political commitment of the victim.
Two years before the presidential election, some 11.7 million voters (out of nearly 93 million) must appoint their next governor in six states.
The Morena, which already governs 16 of the 32 states, is the favorite in four regions.
This party is given largely in the lead in Quintana Roo (southeast), which attracted some 12 million tourists in 2021 on the beaches of Cancún, Tulum and the Riviera Maya, according to local statistics.
It is the mayor of Cancún, Mara Lezama Espinosa, who defends the colors of Morena. In his city, the feeling of insecurity affected 80% of the population in March 2022 (compared to 85% in December 2021), one of the highest rates in Mexico, according to the regular survey by the National Institute of Statistics and of geography (Inegi).
In Cancún, the violence is fueled by drug traffickers who compete for the market of millions of tourists (settlement of accounts and shootings, extortion of businesses, restaurants and nightclubs, etc.).
President Lopez Obrador’s party is also the favorite in Oaxaca, another destination with heavenly beaches on the Pacific hit by a hurricane earlier this week.
Residents of a village in the hinterland set fire to ballot boxes to denounce the absence of relief, local media reported.
The Morena is also in ambush in the industrial region of Hidalgo (center), where Alstom-Bombardier has a factory.
The end of the Party of the institutional revolution?
In the latter state, this party and its allies could finish ousting the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), in place for 93 years.
It would be a new blow for the PRI, which had ruled Mexico unchallenged for 70 years until 2000.
The result could be tighter in Tamaulipas (northeast) in the immediate vicinity of Texas, where thousands of migrants wait at the United States border to cross to the other side of the Rio Grande, under the threat of smugglers from the organized crime and drug traffickers.
Elections are also taking place in two states in the center north, those of Aguascalientes (five women in competition) and Durango, one of the battlegrounds between the two main cartels in Mexico.