Mexico’s opposition announces Xóchitl Gálvez as presidential candidate

Mexico City, Aug 31 (EFE).- Mexican opposition announced Thursday that its presidential candidate for the 2024 elections will be Xóchitl Gálvez.

Gálvez, who is currently a senator for the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), will be the candidate of the opposition alliance Frente Amplio por México (Broad Alliance for Mexico) for the September 6 coming election.

“After many agreements, today we know that Senator Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz will head the leadership of the Frente Amplio por México,” said Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez, member of the alliance’s Organizing Committee, in a press conference.

The alliance is also integrated by the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The movement will run in oppositon to the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“Xóchitl represents the hope of Mexico, of a Mexico without limits, of a united Mexico and a prosperous Mexico,” said Armando Tejeda, PAN’s national secretary of elections.

Gálvez, a businesswoman and indigenous woman from the state of Hidalgo, has taken on López Obrador head-on, which boosted her chances when she announced her presidential aspirations just last June.

Although Gálvez was scheduled to face PRI Senator Beatriz Paredes in a public vote on Sunday, Paredes resigned on Wednesday after an official poll was released that gave Gálvez the edge with 57.6% of the vote.

The consultation was then canceled, and instead the opposition movement will hold an event on Sunday at the Angel of Independence in Mexico City, where it will hand over the winner’s certificate to Gálvez, as revealed by the Organizing Committee.

Lopez Obrador branded the process as a “farce” because he predicted from the beginning that Gálvez would be “imposed,” the opposition alliance defended that the process registered a total of 33 aspirants and 3 million possible voters.

“It is an exercise that already left a mark in the country’s history, and it was so because, for the first time, the parties and the civil society made decisions,” said Sanchez Gutierrez.

Gálvez’s candidacy is also historic because it will be the first time that the PRI and the PAN, Mexico’s two traditional rivals, will be allied in a presidential election.

“Today, here, we express our great satisfaction for reaching this point of our great national project, above all, united and strengthened,” remarked Rolando Zapata, PRI’s Secretary of Electoral Action. EFE

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