The opposition says it no longer wants Senator Ricardo Monreal from Morena as a presidential candidate. The president of the PRD, Jesus Zambrano, has closed that door because the politician “did not define himself” on time. “That window has already closed. As a possibility to be considered, we came to say it, I personally said it, that he could be a possible candidate from a very broad front looking towards the 2024 elections, but we no longer see it that way, ”he told reporters. Monreal’s decision to vote against the electoral reform proposed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has distanced him from the rest of Morena, but it seems that he has not brought him closer to the other side.
Zambrano has acknowledged that Monreal’s name had been considered as an opposition candidate for the 2024 elections. “I personally told him: ‘Ricardo, you are wasting precious time, it is time for definitions’; and he told me: ‘no, I’m going to continue fighting inside’. I told him: ‘your place is here, what are you doing there? There you no longer fit, they no longer want you there, here is your field of action so that you can be considered for an option’. It was what we talked about, but we already saw that it was not defined and neither case has the possibility of keeping that window open ”.
Monreal voted this Thursday with the rest of the opposition against Lopez Obrador’s proposal to remove powers from the National Electoral Institute (INE). The vast majority of the Morena bench, of which he is the coordinator, did not follow him. The senator, however, has denied that his rejection of the reform is a way of paving the way for an eventual opposition presidential candidacy. “He is not motivated to build a political future in the opposition or to search for spaces and negotiations in the social organization in which he participated”, he has declared.
The Morena senator has been toying with the idea of leaving Morena for months because he affirms that there is no “even floor” to define the presidential candidacy before the 2024 elections. The head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, is seen as the favorite of Lopez Obrador to succeed him. In a recent interview with this newspaper, Monreal marked as his red line the fact that Morena decides to choose his representative through a survey. “If the party decides that it is a survey prepared by them, I will not go. It would be a farce,” he noted.
On the opposition side, those interested are piling up to be candidates in an election that is difficult for them – all the polls anticipate a victory for Morena. In the PAN, the main opposition party, the current president of the Chamber of Deputies, Santiago Creel, and Senator Lilly Tellez have expressed their interest. In the PRI, senators Claudia Ruiz Massieu and Beatriz Paredes and the former Secretary of Tourism Enrique de la Madrid have also done so. It is still not clear how the opposition alliance, of which the PRD is also a part, will choose its rooster among so many candidates.
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