Founded nearly seven years ago, the left-wing party in power in Mexico aims to strengthen its supremacy on Sunday during local elections in six of the 32 states where many economic assets and major problems are concentrated. of insecurity.
Two years before the presidential election, approximately 11.7 million voters (out of nearly 93 million) began voting to appoint their next governor in six states.
The National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which already governs 16 of the 32 states, is the favorite of the four regions.
This party leads Quintana Roo, which will attract approximately 12 million tourists by 2021 to the beaches of Cancun, Tulum and Riviera Maya, according to local statistics.
The mayor of Cancun, Mara Lezama Espinosa, defends the colors of MORENA in this region. 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 National Institute of Statistics and Geography.
In Cancun, the violence is fueled by small drug traffickers competing for a market of millions of tourists (agreements on accounts and hunting, racketeering of businesses, restaurants and nightclubs, etc.).
Also a favorite was President Lopez Obrador’s party in Oaxaca, another destination with heavenly beaches in the Pacific, which was hit by the storm earlier this week.
Residents of a village in the hinterland burned ballot boxes to denounce the lack of assistance, local media reported.
The MORENA also aims to snatch the industrial region of Hidalgo from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has been in power for 93 years.
This will be a new blow for PRIwho ruled Mexico unopposed for 70 years to 2000.
The consequences could be even more severe in Tamaulipas, just outside Texas, where thousands of migrants are waiting on the U.S. border to cross the Rio Grande under threat from organized crime smugglers and drug traffickers.
Elections are also taking place in two states in the center-north, in Aguascalientes and Durango, one of the battlegrounds between the two main cartels of drug traffickers in Mexico.
The campaign was not bloody by candidate assassinations, unlike last year, before the legislative election in June 2021. Several dozen candidates were killed in anticipation of the ballot. These elections finally merged Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party base.
An activist from MORENA however was murdered on Sunday in Juchitan, in the state of Oaxaca, some media pointed out, citing a press release from the prosecution that did not specify whether the murder was related to the victim’s political commitment.
Source: Radio-Canada
