Schism in the Mexican opposition: the PAN and the PRD suspend their alliance with the PRI

The National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) have announced the “temporary suspension” of the coalition that both maintained with the PRI. The cause is the initiative presented by this party in Congress to extend until 2028 the presence of the military in the streets of Mexico carrying out public security tasks. The initiative also divides the PRI, whose leaders in the Senate do not agree with this measure. The President of the Government, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, expressed this Tuesday his support for the initiative of the tricolor party, which further deepened the cracks between the opposition groups.

PAN and PRD have issued a statement in which they express their “surprise and profound discomfort” with the initiative of the PRI, which they ask to “value and honor” the electoral platform that they had jointly agreed upon. “Extending the militarization of the country is irresponsible and contravenes the laws that the opposition parties have voted against,” they have pointed out. The rupture of relations will last until the PRI respects the agreements of the Va por Mexico coalition, with which the three formations have been running for the last elections in the country, and with which they form the opposition bloc in the Chambers to most brunette. The PRI has responded immediately. Its national coordinator, Alejandro Moreno, has said on social media: “The PRI is not going to sit around counting dead. If with the initiative that we present, a life is saved, it will have been worth it. Everyone in Mexico is tired of insecurity.”

The tension between the parties had been brewing for days, when the deputy for Durango, Yolanda de la Torre, presented this initiative so that the military continue to be a force of public order in the streets. Soon they obtained the support of Morena, through the mouth of the Prime Minister himself, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but also the threats of divorce from his allies. “In the PRI we do not accept orders from allies or adversaries,” Moreno said on Tuesday. Hours before, the national leader of the PAN, Marko Cortes, had warned his associates that if they did not depose his attitude in Congress they would be forced to cut ties, as has happened. Despite everything, both Moreno and the PRD leader, Jesus Zambrano, have expressed the possibility that the alliance will continue.

The political storm has adjacent chapters that have not gone unnoticed among political analysts. Alejandro Moreno is pending a lawsuit for illicit enrichment at the request of the Campeche Prosecutor’s Office, for which he needs to be removed as a deputy. The break with his partners and the support for Morena’s request in his public security strategy would be the bargaining chip for his protection in court, according to some analysts in the local press. His toughest adversary, the Morenoite governor in Campeche, Layla Sansores, also announced that Moreno will no longer be the object of criticism on his show Tuesdays of the Jaguar, where they have been systematically attacking him through videos with alleged conversations by the PRI leader that evidenced illicit of the politician. This gesture by the governor has also been understood as a truce in the battle between the PRI and Morena.

The PRI spends its lowest hours, after a constant electoral decline that distances it from the positions it had in the national political scene for decades. The strength of the PRI has been constantly wearing down with the great irruption in the Mexican political landscape of Morena, where many of the former PRI leaders and sympathizers have taken refuge. The argument now used by the tricolor party to support the initiative in favor of the military is the enormous insecurity that Mexico is going through, the same one that President Lopez Obrador has used to recognize that he had had to rectify his position of yesteryear, when he criticized the presence military in the streets. “I have changed my mind in the face of the violence that I inherited,” he said on Tuesday.

The Senate remains, however, an opposition stronghold. The militarization of the National Guard, which is being discussed these days in the upper house, has revealed the division that the PRI is going through. The PRI senators also showed their anger at their own party’s initiative in Congress and expressed their disagreement. They have also asked their own for explanations for this measure.

The statement, signed by Marko Cortes for the PAN and Jesus Zambrano for the PRD, asks the PRI not to jeopardize the electoral chances of the opposition bloc against Morena in the presidential elections (and others) to be held in 2024. Both recognize the “historic contributions” of the Army to the country, but they do not want, they have said, that the military be blamed by the citizens “because of the failure of the current government’s security strategy.”

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