MEXICO CITY.- Las presidential election next June in Mexico they will not have candidates independents, after none of the eight candidates reached the signatures required by the electoral authorities.
The National Electoral Institute (INE) announced the closure of the process, one day after the deadline to collect 961,405 signatures of support – 1% of the country’s nominal list – in at least 17 states expired. The organization confirmed that none of the eight independent candidates reached the required signatures.
The decision left film producer Eduardo Verástegui, former opposition governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, dentist María Edgar Mares, lawyer Ignacio Benavente Torres, and businessman Fernando Jiménez Chávez, among others, out of the presidential race.
After the closure of the process, the conservative Verástegui attacked the INE, which he accused of imposing “obstacles” to his candidacy.
The 49-year-old politician, who heads the Viva México Movement, had denounced for several weeks that the INE registration system had flaws, and took his claims to the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power where he presented an action to be given an extension of time. 12 days, which was rejected.
Verástegui, who only achieved 14% of the required rubrics, published on his X account that he will continue with his movement despite the setback. “Freedom of choice, conscience and decision-making is a right that cannot be stolen from us,” he added.
Verástegui, who was also an actor and singer, stood out from other independent candidates for his controversial positions on abortion, euthanasia and equal marriage. As part of his pre-campaign, the politician recorded a video in which he appeared firing an assault rifle, accompanied by the message: “Look what we are going to do to the terrorists of the 2023 agenda, climate change and the ideology of gender”.
For the elections on June 2, the candidacies of the former head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will compete for the ruling Morena party; and of the former senator Xóchitl Gálvez, candidate for a coalition made up of the opposition National Action Party (PAN), Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The minority Citizen Movement party is expected to define in the coming weeks whether or not to launch a presidential candidate.
After the electoral reform of 2014, the first attempt at independent candidacy in Mexico It happened a year later, when Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, known as “El Bronco,” won the governorship of the northern state of Nuevo León. Two years later, the politician left office to participate, also as an independent, in the 2018 presidential elections in which he was the winner. Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
After that electoral process, an investigation was initiated against Rodríguez Calderón for the diversion of resources to gather signatures, for which he was arrested in March 2022. A judge revoked the criminal process seven months later and annulled the arrest measure. domiciliary against him.
For Patricio Morelos, professor of Political Science at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, the absence of independent candidacies in these elections, as well as the judicial process that Rodríguez Calderón faced, represent important precedents that speak of how “complex it is today for a citizen or even a politician without a party to meet the requirements set out by the law.”
Source: With information from AP
