MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president has vowed to proceed campaigning towards the opposition front-runner for the 2024 presidential elections, breaking a longstanding custom of Mexican presidents conserving out of the race to succeed them.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s goal is Xóchitl Gálvez, a plain-talking senator and former indigenous affairs official. Gálvez hasn’t been nominated but by opposition events, however has been gaining momentum.
Parties are nonetheless in main season and the official campaigns don’t formally begin till September, so López Obrador’s criticism of Gálvez’s potential candidacy will not be technically unlawful. But López Obrador prompt final week that he could proceed even after campaigns begin in September.
“The electoral process doesn’t start until September, in September we’ll see what we can say,” the president stated. “Clearly, if justice and democracy are at stake, we’ll have to continue speaking out.”
That might violate Article 134 of the Constitution, which says authorities media, promoting and public relations should solely be used for informative or academic functions, not for or towards any politician.
Gálvez, for her half, has stated it’s “reprehensible” that the president is utilizing authorities funds and social media accounts to criticize her.
“She is the candidate of the mafia of power,” López Obrador stated final week. Although Gálvez serves within the Senate for the conservative National Action get together, she comes from a small-town, partly indigenous background, and has typically taken extra progressive stances than her get together.
On Monday, he went after her once more, spending not less than 20 minutes on the topic:
“They want to fool the people again with this,” he stated of Gálvez’s candidacy. “They are promoting her, but she’s not gaining ground, no, no, no, she is not gaining ground.”
To put López Obrador’s habits in perspective, it will be much like Barack Obama lashing Donald Trump often and at size at White House press briefings in 2016, or George W. Bush utilizing such briefings to often assault Obama in 2008.
López Obrador has already run afoul of electoral courts on exactly this challenge.
On Thursday, a federal electoral tribunal dominated that López Obrador had violated guidelines prohibiting using authorities assets in campaigns, associated to feedback he made in the course of the run-up to 2 state elections held in Mexico in June.
The grievance in that case – filed in March – was much like the president’s use of his morning press briefing Friday to criticize Gálvez. In March, López Obrador used his morning press briefing to induce Mexicans to not vote for opposition candidates within the two state races, saying “don’t vote for the conservative Alliance … not one vote for the conservatives.”
A panel of the Federal Electoral Tribunal dominated that constituted “the violation of the principles of impartiality, neutrality and equity, as well as the improper use of public funds,” provided that the federal government pays to carry, document and distribute the president’s press briefings on the lavish National Palace, the place he lives.
Gálvez has requested to be allowed to reply to the president’s feedback on the day by day press briefing, and even received a courtroom injunction permitting her to take action, however López Obrador refused, saying she needed to “play politics” on the briefing.
“From you I only want one thing, to treat me with respect,” Gálvez stated in a taped message to López Obrador posted on social media, one of many solely methods she has to rebut the president.
For instance, on Friday, López Obrador claimed Gálvez had by no means been to the impoverished, largely indigenous highlands of Chiapas. Gálvez shot again “the president is lying,” and posted a photograph of a road-building venture within the space she had overseen as head of indigenous growth in 2004.
“It is reprehensible that they are using government money and official (social media) accounts to insult me and whip up hate,” Gálvez wrote. “They’re desperate.”
For a number of a long time, Mexican presidents have averted – and lately, been legally prohibited from – making brazenly partisan marketing campaign statements. That is partially as a result of Mexico is a extremely centralized nation the place the president wields huge energy, each political and monetary.
Mexican presidents have sturdy causes to care who succeeds them: They can’t search re-election and serve just one six-year time period, they at all times depend on their get together’s candidate to safe their legacy, or within the worst case, get somebody elected who received’t examine any corruption throughout their administration.
That’s to not say that previous presidents haven’t jockeyed behind the scenes to tilt elections. In 2006, ex-president Vicente Fox was extensively seen to have inspired using obscure authorized technicalities to attempt to get López Obrador disqualified from the presidential race, which he ultimately was allowed to enter. He misplaced by the narrowest of margins after the courtroom case was dropped, and has complained he was robbed of the presidency ever since.
But whereas Fox by no means disguised his dislike for López Obrador, he by no means brazenly criticized him or talked about him by title. The closest Fox got here to any public marketing campaign assertion was in 2005, when he informed a crowd “You don’t change horses in the middle of the river,” suggesting his get together ought to keep in energy.
Political analyst José Antonio Crespo stated that Fox’s feedback didn’t come near López Obrador’s. “They were about 5% of what is going on now,” Crespo stated. ”It is tiny as compared.”
He famous that an electoral courtroom dominated in 2006 that Fox’s intervention could have unduly influenced that election.
“If the tribunal said in 2006 that Fox’s tiny participation – he didn’t even mention López Obrador by name – put the election at risk, then by that standard, what are we going to say about López Obrador’s participation? Would Morena’s victory have to be overturned if they win? Because he’s done it a thousand times more,” Crespo stated.
Some Mexicans suppose that attempting to restrict what López Obrador can say is overly restrictive.
“It’s just stupid. Let him talk. Who cares?” stated Federico Estevez, a retired political science professor on the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “That’s not a serious accusation. Of course it’s true, and it’s illegal, on the face of it. But it’s a stupid law. And it’s a law that actually can’t be enforced.”
That is true sufficient: López Obrador himself brazenly performs with the authorized restraints, saying “you-know-who” as an alternative of mentioning particular person politicians or events.
Crespo, the analyst, stated that scenario virtually ensures that López Obrador will proceed the partisan feedback after September.
“He is going to continue campaigning, even though the law prohibits it, he doesn’t care, because he knows that in the end, there will be no consequences,” he stated.
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