One candidate murdered, others threatened, bodyguards assigned to gubernatorial wannabes and calls for a boycott: The June election campaign in Mexico’s “Wild West” is off to a rough start.
The June 7 midterm vote for legislative seats at Mexico’s federal and state levels is set to be the first major ballot test for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, almost halfway through his six-year term.
However, it will also be a challenge of the central government’s ability to ensure peaceful elections in the southwestern state of Guerrero and other violence-torn regions, such as Jalisco, Michoacan and Tamaulipas.
Photo: AFP
Mexicans are to vote for 500 federal legislators, governors in nine of 32 states and mayors in almost 900 municipalities.
Much of the focus has already been on Guerrero, a state that has drawn international attention since 43 college students were allegedly abducted by police and slaughtered by a drug gang last year.
While acts of violence could mar the election in Guerrero, experts say that it is unlikely to have a major bearing on the outcome of the vote.
Photo: EPA
“There will be problems, but they would not change the electoral process,” National Autonomous University of Mexico security expert Raul Benitez Manaut said. “It is very hard to paralyze an election.”
However, the campaign has already been marked by threats and violence.
The mayoral candidate for Pena Nieto’s centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the town of Chilapa was slain on May 1 when he was returning home from a campaign appearance.
Armed suspects reportedly stopped the convoy of Ulises Fabian Quiroz, made him get out of his vehicle and shot him at point-blank range.
In the same mountainous area, known for its gang turf battles, a candidate for Guerrero state governor, former Acapulco mayor Luis Walton, was confronted by armed men who reportedly pointed their guns at him despite a police escort.
The tense atmosphere prompted the PRI’s substitute for Quiroz to refuse to run for mayor in Chilapa.
The leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party said one of its candidates in another Guerrero town was kidnapped on Tuesday, but the politician turned up later and said he had “only” been robbed.
Some political parties have urged their candidates to avoid campaigning at night.
In addition to the violence, parents of the 43 students and a radical teacher’s union have called for an election boycott.
While the vote could be disrupted in small, remote villages, the boycott “will not succeed because the elections will surely take place in big cities of Guerrero,” Benitez Manaut said.
Guerrero is not the only state plagued by drug cartel violence ahead of the June elections.
The western state of Jalisco, home to Mexico’s second-biggest city, Guadalajara, was hit by violence last weekend when the government launched an operation to dismantle the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel.
The New Generation gang downed an army helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade on May 1, killing six soldiers.
It was suspected in the deaths of 20 police officers in March and last month.
Michoacan, where farmers formed vigilante forces in 2013 to combat the Knights Templar drug cartel, is also set to vote.
One of the federal congress candidates is Hipolito Mora, a founder of the vigilante movement, who was jailed over a shoot-out between his militia and a rival group, but later released.
In the north, towns in the state of Tamaulipas have faced attacks from the Gulf cartel following the arrest of some of its leaders this year.
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