MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) on Wednesday backed Xochitl Galvez’s candidacy for the 2024 presidential election at the expense of its own contender, paving the way for the maverick senator to head an alliance of opposition parties.
PRI chairman Alejandro Moreno said his party was backing Galvez, who represents the center-right National Action Party (PAN), because opinion polls showed she was primed to beat PRI hopeful Senator Beatriz Paredes in a vote due on Sunday.
Paredes was notably absent at the press conference at which Moreno spoke surrounded by sombre-looking party colleagues.
Galvez, a spirited, shrewd communicator with an irreverent sense of humor, is widely viewed as the candidate that could most weaken the iron hold President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) has on public opinion.
Still, the PRI’s withdrawal of Paredes, who was not lagging far behind Galvez in some recent polling, left a bad taste in the mouth of some supporters which could undermine the opposition alliance.
One prominent Paredes supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed anger at the way she had been pulled from the race just days before voters were due to settle the matter.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; editing by Stephen Eisenhammer)
