Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Xóchitl Gálvez.EFE / CUARTOSCURO
The political battle between Andrés Manuel López Obrador and PAN member Xóchitl Gálvez has turned what has been a rather weak internal struggle into a real election campaign. The official and opposition teams vying for the presidency have stuck to unity specifications and kept a quiet tone, but that truce appears to have ended. The President this Friday questioned the precautions that the INE is trying to dictate and attacked the opposition’s most advanced candidate: “Did you say that she is the candidate?” We are not yet in elections. Is it because I can’t answer anything?” he said. Not only he, but also the Morenistas who hope to succeed him, clearly understood the message of the National Palace and began their attacks on the opposition, while not remaining silent. Santiago Creel, supplanted by public opinion towards his internal opponent Xóchitl Gálvez, has abandoned the chivalrous tone that has characterized his political career and has almost vocally attacked the Morenistas and defended his PAN DNA. As expected, the political mood heats up when an election campaign for the presidential succession, which has previously been called something else, begins early. And that first explosion leaves a long shock wave.
Like-minded people and opponents these days are pointing out that López Obrador’s attacks on Xóchitl Gálvez are fueling a fire that can burn more intensely in Morena than in the opposition. Far from being intimidated, López Obrador seems determined to use the blower every day. Today, he insists on disqualifying the plurality of the opposition’s internal process for selecting its candidates, arguing that Gálvez is a manufactured product: “They needed someone who was popular and who was born in a city.” As if people on thumb sucking They have tried to discern who they are masquerading as the leader of the people and put it aside [Santiago Creel]. I don’t want to get too involved with that, Santiago is getting angry,” he explained in the morning conference. It appears, however, that the President’s strategy was aimed at dividing the adversary’s ranks by portraying Creel as a descending victim of the coalition’s alleged manipulations of the internal process.
The still President of the Chamber of Deputies is furious. His usual polite tone exploded. In a trembling voice and angry tone, he called the president “disgraceful,” but he also seems to be betraying unease at the media monopoly of his colleague Gálvez, who has no political affiliation but has strong support from PAN members. PRI members and PRD members. Creel thanked his fellow believers for their support on the day he registered for the race with a clear message: “I feel your support in my PAN heart.” The MP has opted against Morena for an apocalyptic tone, going so far as to referred to it as “the government of death”. And unlike the PRI, today he is not rejecting coalitions to stop what he has called a “national emergency.”
López Obrador opposes Creel’s disqualification from the government, but his guns remain aimed at Xóchitl Gálvez, whom he accuses of being used by the opposition to falsify his alleged naturalness and humble origins. This Friday, he poked fun at some of the Hidalgo woman’s images and behavior: “I hop on a bike, I hop on a tricycle, tamales, tamales, delicious tamales; I say a few rude words … But if he hardly won in the hills where the richest live, but what about the Chiapas mountains, when did Xochitl go to the Chiapas mountains, to Porvenir, to Motozintla? The President has conjured up the ghost of a candidate who claims to be close to the people and defends that politics is a matter of “beliefs, principles and ideals”. She was alongside Fox, Imagine and Claudio X González. They are wrong if they want to deceive people.
Caps react
The shock wave of the legal dispute between López Obrador and Gálvez has been clear to the poppers of Morena and Va por México, who understood that the focus of the media is there and who interpreted the speech from the National Palace as a signal to ring the bell. As the front-runner in most polls, Claudia Sheinbaum had chosen a discreet strategy and stayed away from controversies with her party colleagues, but her team understood that the political moment required her to kill two birds with one stone: regain prominence and to are demonstrating their loyalty to the President amid the conflict.
“There is nothing new there, only the previous regime, that of corruption and that of privilege,” said the former prime minister in a video titled “Unity against the cynical opposition bloc”. Sheinbaum this week ridiculed Va por México’s internal claim, saying that if the opposition returned to government, PRI member Alejandro Alito Moreno would be “financial coordinator”; former President Felipe Calderón, “responsible for the peace program”; Vicente Fox, “of Democracy,” and Santiago Creel, the director of “Arts and Theater.”
Creel’s theatrical performances, which brought him to tears upon registration as an opposition candidate and delivered an unusually daring speech, appear to be another side effect of the clash between López Obrador and Gálvez. However, the legislature, tricked several times by López Obrador into confronting Gálvez, has preferred to go on the offensive against his Morena rivals. “Marcelo, the only thing you do is overpower the land and the people,” he accused Ebrard, whom he accused of being “subject to his leader”. The former foreign minister, who until a few days ago had hinted that he “didn’t care” who the opposition candidate was, snapped at the MP: “Santiago, you’ve never won elections.”
“It’s a shame that he chooses to chair the Bureau of the Chamber of Deputies,” declared Adán Augusto López, not wanting to fall behind. “We will beat them anyway,” said the former interior minister on his social networks. The entry of the opposition Corcholatas into the race ahead of the 2024 election has lifted the curtain on the disqualifications and attacks typical of an election campaign. It is indeed the start of the competition and also an opportunity for the candidates to increase their visibility and turn that popularity into voting intentions, a crucial aspect of their political ambitions.
Morena candidates have understood that they can no longer turn their backs on what their rivals, who have also stolen the limelight from them these days, are doing without the attrition that a leadership role in the election campaign has brought with it for several months brings . Those of Va por México, on the other hand, have recognized that their supporters want a personality who can fight alongside the Obradorista candidates, regardless of ideological or partisan affinities. It was what catapulted Senator Lilly Téllez and now her colleague Xóchitl Gálvez to the top. The lawsuit has shaken up both sides, but the challenge is maintaining the strategy in the nearly two months remaining to the target.
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