PACHUCA, Hgo. (proceso.com.mx)
Like the former president, they accused arbitrariness and impositions by the National Executive Committee (CEN) in charge of Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas, president, and Carolina Viggiano Austria, general secretary.
“Today we are leaving the PRI because we have been victims of abuses,” said the mayor of Pachuca, Sergio Baños Rubio, a speaker at the press conference in which it was also reported that 70 councilors and trustees, who are also members of municipal and regional party committees , as well as sectionals, joined the massive withdrawals from their militancy.
The municipality of the Hidalgo capital criticized that the CEN held them responsible for the electoral defeat of 2022, when, he assured, as members of the bases they joined the candidacy of Carolina Viggiano Austria, who lost 2 to 1 (61 against 31 percent of the votes) against the morenista Julio Menchaca Salazar.
These resignations are added to those of the eight local deputies who made up the PRI bench in the Hidalgo Congress, including the president of the PRI State Steering Committee, Julio Valera Piedras, who was accompanied by other members of the local leadership.
After the first casualties that followed that of Governor Fayad Meneses, both Moreno Cárdenas and Viggiano Austria dismissed these exits, assuring that “they had left a long time ago” and “they did not represent anything”, in the face of an alleged surrender to the governments, federal and state, of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena).
The leader of the national PRI even asked that the former head of the state executive be investigated for possible misuse of resources, and that his resignation does not guarantee impunity for processes initiated by the administration of Julio Menchaca Salazar against members of his political groups for the case called “the sinister scam”.
Prior to the public act in which the municipal presidents, led by Baños Rubio, announced their resignation from the PRI, the substitute mayor of Pachuca, Benjamín Rico Moreno, accused his running mate of putting pressure on the members of the capital’s cabinet, councilors and officials of PRI extraction to leave the party, under threat of being sanctioned or dismissed from their posts.
The mayor replied: “I think he is on fire, it is the truth of things”, in addition to saying about Rico, who was Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources in the government of Omar Fayad: “We are not the same”, and ironically : “My accounts have not been frozen; his, yes (…) he has many things that people demand of him”, in reference to the blockade that, in June 2021, was carried out by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to the company Construcciones y Desarrollos Inmobiliarios Rico, owned by the former state official, when being investigated for possible improper operations related to money laundering.
Sergio Baños, who presumed that with his candidacy in 2020 the PRI recovered Pachuca, then governed by Acción Nacional (PAN), predicted the loss of political positions for his former party to continue with the position that, he claims, dictates from Mexico City the Committee chaired by Moreno Cárdenas.
“If the national leadership continues like this, it will not have good results. Impositions are what they are generating,” he stated, referring to the latest electoral defeats. In addition, he considered the appointment as president of the CDE of federal deputy Marco Antonio Mendoza Bustamante (affiliated with the Viggiano Austria group), another imposition from the CEN.
They include Félix Soto… and then they remove him
Among the names of mayors placed on the chairs of the presidium, the organizers included that of Israel Félix Soto, mayor of Mineral de la Reforma and former secretary of Public Policy of Fayad, for whom, according to “Alito” Moreno, the confrontation began between the CEN and the PRI controlled by the ex-governor, because he was seeking his nomination as a PRI candidate for governor in 2022, while the National Committee promoted Carolina Viggiano, who was finally the standard-bearer after submitting the nomination to the PAN, who He led an alliance also made up of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
However, the name was withdrawn prior to the start of the press conference.
Questioned in this regard, Sergio Baños said he did not know the reason why the name was included and then removed, nor the position of Félix Soto regarding the PRI, the main profile promoted by Fayad during his term.
He only mentioned: “We are of our own free will”, also when asked if the action of the mayors was ordered by the former president, although he took the opportunity to send a greeting “to my friend Governor Omar Fayad” and reaffirm that they were in the same fight against what, he insisted, are outrages from his former party.
He recognized that because of the insignia that he now rejects, he obtained the public positions that he has held, like other of his ancestors: “There are many years, my grandfather was municipal president in Mineral de la Reforma and I was always in the PRI,” he stated, when expressing the feeling about his determination.
Likewise, he denied that the resignation of the former ruling party guarantees them impunity in the control of the public account and in the face of possible processes opened before the State Attorney General’s Office (PGJEH), due to the fact that municipal presidents such as Julio César González García, from Huazalingo (including his name initially, but not in the final list), and Luis Francisco González Garay were accused of participating in the alleged scheme for simulating services and transfers to shell companies called the “sinister scam”, accused of possible embezzlement of 18.5 and 30.9 million pesos, respectively.
The mayors who resigned are Alejandro Tello, from Mineral del Monte; Alejandro Velasco, from Molango; Jorge Martín Borbolla, from Omitlán; Erika Saab Lara, from San Felipe Orizatlán; Salvador Jiménez Calzadilla, from Tepeji del Río; Said Chávez Cobos, from Tlahuiltepa; Elsa Dolores Vázquez, from Villa de Tezontepec; Elias San Juan Sanchez, from Yahualica; from Zapotlán, Edgar Josué Moreno Gayosso, and Jesús Hernández Juárez, from Zempoala. In addition to them, the municipalities of Pachuca and Pisaflores.
