Tens of thousands of demonstrators cloaked in pink marched through cities in Mexico and abroad on Sunday in what they called a “march for democracy” targeting the country’s ruling party ahead of the June 2 elections.
The demonstrations called by Mexico’s opposition parties advocated for free and fair elections in the Latin American nation and railed against corruption the same day presidential front-runner Claudia Sheinbaum registered as a candidate for ruling party Morena.
Approximately 90,000 people turned out to rail against the leader, government figures showed.
Photo: AFP
Sheinbaum is largely seen as a continuation candidate of popular populist Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He is adored by many voters who say he bucked the country’s elite parties from power in 2018 and represents the working class.
However, the 70-year-old president has also been accused of making moves that endanger the country’s democracy. Last year, he slashed funding for the electoral agency, the National Electoral Institute (INE), and weakened oversight of campaign spending, something INE’s head said could “wind up poisoning democracy itself.”
The agency’s color, pink, has been used as a symbol by demonstrators.
Lopez Obrador has also attacked journalists in hours-long press briefings, has frequently attacked the judiciary and claimed judges are part of a conservative conspiracy against his administration.
In Mexico City on Sunday, thousands of people dressed in pink flocked to the city’s main plaza roaring “get Lopez out.” Others carried signs reading “the power of the people is greater than the people in power.”
Gabriela Ozuna, 61, said she and her family came from Baja California state, and were participating in the march not just to support democratic institution, but also to protest attacks on candidates by drug cartels, especially in local elections.
“We know our democracy is in danger. What we want to do is defend it and keep defending it,” Ozuna said.
Among the opposition organizations marching were the National Civic Front, Yes for Mexico, Citizen Power, Civil Society Mexico, UNE Mexico and United for Mexico.
“Democracy doesn’t solve lack of water, it doesn’t solve hunger, it doesn’t solve a lot of things. But without democracy you can’t solve anything,” said Enrique de la Madrid Cordero, a politician from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in a video posted to social media calling for people to join the protests.
The PRI held uninterrupted power in Mexico for more than 70 years.
Marches were organized in a hundred cities across the country, and in other cities in the US and Spain.
Still, the president remains highly popular and opinion polls indicate Sheinbaum appears set to coast easily into the presidency.
Lopez Obrador repeatedly dismissed the protests, telling reporters on Friday that his critics do not care about democracy and are organizing the march to return the corrupt to power.
Following the massive demonstration, he continued to rail on critics, and said there would be no electoral fraud in the election and that he had not intervened in democratic processes.
“It’s their democracy ... the democracy of the corrupt. What we want is there to be democracy of the people. We don’t want power without the people. They’re the ones that establish an anti-democracy with electoral fraud,” Lopez Obrador said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS