Pink tide: A pan minute reveals the influence of parties in organizing a march in defense of the INE Mexican elections 2024

The November 2022 march in defense of the National Electoral Institute (INE) was promoted as non-partisan, a resurgence of civil society against Morena’s steamroller and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. However, a document from the National Action Party (PAN) obtained by EL PAÍS shows that the parties of the opposition coalition were very involved in organizing those protests in Mexico City and in the states, although they once remained in the background. Roads. “Let me tell you about the march and what happened in the country on November 13. They were not spontaneous, we were working for hours with civil society organizations to create them, negotiating, from our National Assembly, which was on Saturday the 12th, we were able to conclude and accompany that same day. “They were going to attack the entire country,” said Santiago Creel at the Pan National Council in December 2022, according to a description of the session organized by this newspaper.

Months later, Xochitl Gálvez embodied the hopes of the opposition coalition and raised the debate that civil society had encouraged him to run for president by standing against the flow of parties. pink tide They will march again this May 19, the same day as the third and final presidential debate. But now the cards are open: organizing groups have openly stated that they support Gálvez’s candidacy. The opposition candidate plans to go to the protest in the morning, the closing ceremony and later go to the debate.

the first mobilization that gave rise to pink tide It was a massive march in the center of Mexico City on November 13, 2022. The attendees wore pink, the official color of INE, in defense of which they came out to protest. This march was a response to an initiative that President López Obrador sent to Congress to reform the electoral system, and which included the reduction of the functions of the INE, the removal of its members and, ultimately, the creation of a new one. Institute. Organizations such as the National Civic Front, C por México and UNID@S – led by opposition businessman Claudio X. González called on citizens to join the protest under the slogan “INE has not been touched”.

Leaders of the Frente Amplio (a coalition of the PAN, PRI and PRD) joined the mobilization, arguing that they had come only as citizens challenged by the call. PAN’s president, Marco Cortés, said earlier that November that PAN militants would go “without partisan colors” to march “in defense of freedom together with civil society.” But there was much more coincidence of principles between the parties and organizers of that first mobilization.

The groups took to the streets again in February 2023 and March 2024. Among the reasons for the protest he also added the protection of the judiciary, with which the President has been in conflict for a long time. The newspaper asked Accion Nacional for a position on partisan influences in the mobilization. The Secretary of Social Communications responded that there would be no comment on matters addressed in the National Council “in accordance with our internal rules”. Creel was also contacted through his spokesperson, but he did not respond to messages.

first conversation

On November 12, 2022 – the day before the first march – the PAN, which leads the Broad Front, held a National Assembly at which, in addition to approving reforms to the party’s statute, it refined agreements to confront the protests. to be done. This was revealed by Creel and other PAN leaders at a National Council session held a month later. “We were not only looking at the dates and making the necessary rearrangements, but also where the PAN contingent was going to participate,” said Creel, who was president of the Chamber of Deputies at the time and eventually chair of the PAN campaign. Became the chief.

The National Council, held on December 10, 2022, is the same one where party veterans rejected the PAN coalition with the PRI, and especially with its president, the chameleon Alejandro Moreno. Alito, according to this newspaper. The minutes of the session faithfully record the interventions of the PAN leaders. PAN fought before the National Transparency International Institute (INAI) to prevent the contents of the minutes from being disclosed, arguing that this would jeopardize its election strategies. However, EL PAÍS obtained a transcript that records the speeches and heated debates that took place at that session of the PAN Council.

Creel – who was one of the Frente Amplio candidates for the presidential candidacy at the time, a few months before the coalition chose Gálvez – told councilors that negotiations also included how PAN members would rank among the contestants. Must be captured. “With civic organizations, hours and hours of organizing. We were there in the organization. And when they asked us where we should go in the march, the parties’ proposal was: Finally, let the whole of society be put forward; As you know, the first group was young people. It’s an organisation, there’s definitely a spontaneity to it and that’s the way I understand it, there’s a spontaneity that when people see an organisation, they come out on the streets,” he said, returning to his initial statement that the march Was not generated. From nothing.

The PAN leader said that in the talks it was also decided who should be the speaker in the program. Ultimately, the position fell to political scientist Jos Woldenberg, one of the founders of INE, formerly IFE, in the 1990s. “Who was talking? It didn’t come out of the blue, we were all in agreement and we were thinking about names,” Creel said. “We had our national president (Cortes) there and many of us were trying to see who could better represent us, not PAN, as citizens. And we came to the conclusion that it was Jos Woldenberg. Nevertheless we organized ourselves and we knew in advance that due to the size of the march our contingent would not be able to reach the Revolution Monument. And yet we as a political party decided to give way to the society and stay behind. This is what the organization is about and this is our approach to society,” he indicated.

series of treaties

Creel told the council that the agreements reached for the march were part of a series of talks that Frente Amplio parties had held since 2019 to form a bloc against the ruling party. The alliance bore fruit in 2021, when Morena and his allies lost a good part of their majority in Congress. Marco Cortés took the stage and confirmed that the strength of the mobilization in defense of INE renewed the spirits of the opposition coalition parties, making it possible for the PAN, PRI and PRD to jointly vote against López Obrador’s electoral reform . november. That constitutional amendment was the ruling party’s “Plan A”; Finding themselves shortchanged, the executive and his party, Murray, promoted “Plan B”, a series of reforms to the narrower-scope secondary laws, culminating in the Supreme Court invalidating them. “It was a great day, because there was never any doubt about how the vote would be taken. There were parties that had doubts, and the march of society dispelled them and the opposition faction was united for the good of Mexico,” the PAN leader observed.

Cortés compared the mobilization of 13 November to the demonstration called by López Obrador on the 27th of that month, called people’s march, a show of political strength on the part of the ruling party that was attended by thousands of people from all states (the opposition accused Morenoist governors of mobilizing people to fill the president’s political agenda). “November was a great month because it was the great march (in defense of INE) and again PAN did not hesitate, the moment the march was announced on November 13, PAN announced that it would be in the march and so on. It was not just accompanying, but calling, that people and the PAN party were in the main march in Mexico City,” the party leader said. “There was uniformity, no flags. Everyone was present as citizens. And do you know how many complaints there were about PAN? No one, no support,” he highlighted.

Carlos Medina Plasencia, former governor of Guanajuato, former deputy, and former senator, one of the most prominent members of the PAN, said that “on the 13th it was his turn from (the PAN’s) General Secretariat to participate in the march event.” “The work was carried out in collaboration with Juan Carlos Martínez Terraza (former leader of the party in Morelos) and together with society,” according to the minutes. Medina noted that he and other former PAN leaders were part of Unidos por México, one of the founding unions of UNID@S, the group founded by Claudio X. Gonzalez made it through INE on October 11, a month before the march. Frente Amplio leaders have acknowledged that the businessman played a key role in facilitating a sit-down and talk between Cortes, Alito Moreno and PRD leader Jesús Zambrano with a view to forming an opposition coalition. “A group of 12 PAN governors who have been working for three years are very happy, because we are part of Unidos, there we have promoted with our knowledge and 70 years of experience as governors – who, by the way, Very clearly, it is not easy – that we had the option to form a coalition with five other organizations to promote this joint movement, and yes, we were the originators and drivers of the march in Mexico City on November 13th. ‘ Medina said.

Once Cortes overcame the resistance of PAN councilors to form a coalition with the PRI, the opposition coalition immersed itself in a new negotiation: the method of defining its presidential candidacy. Frente Amplio had opened the door to applications from citizens without a party, but over time that possibility closed. Several candidates withdrew from the race and ultimately leaders chose Gálvez based on survey measurements. Gálvez’s strategists decided that the color of his campaign would be pink, the color that identifies INE.

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