The first presidential debate has given us something to talk about days before it takes place, next Sunday at eight at night. The two candidates and the presidential candidate have begun to warm up before the meeting. Claudia Sheinbaum, standard bearer of Morena, PVEM and PT, has criticized the decision adopted by the National Electoral Institute (INE) – organizer of the debate – that the two moderators be the ones to select the questions that will be asked at the event, and has assured that He will concentrate more on giving proposals than on attacks. The opposition member 12 of the Metro. Jorge Álvarez Máynez, from Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), third in the polls, trusts that the debate will be a turning point that changes the correlation of forces between the candidates.
This will be the first of three presidential debates. For the meeting, to be held at the INE headquarters in Mexico City, the candidates will discuss education and health; transparency and combating corruption, non-discrimination, vulnerable groups and sexist violence. In accordance with the approved format, they must respond to questions from citizens sent through social networks. The moderators will be the journalist Denise Maerker and the presenter Manuel López San Martín.
Morena, the party in Government, objected to the appointment of San Martín and the process of selecting the questions. The party leadership and the presidential candidate demanded that the presenter be impartial, given that he works for the television network TV Azteca, owned by magnate Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who is in confrontation with López Obrador.
The issue of the questions also raised questions from the ruling party. First, because the organization Signa Lab was chosen to filter the questions collected through digital platforms. Morena protested because the group's director, Rossana Reguillo, had previously expressed her support for the opposition candidate. This sidelined Reguillo, although the organization she leads remained within. Signa Lab selected 108 questions from the 24,000 received and sent them to the INE. The electoral referee then handed the leaked questions to the moderators and left them the power to select 30 for the debate.
This point was claimed by Sheinbaum, who considered that the INE should be in charge of the selection. Maerker and San Martín committed to not choosing the final questions until moments before the debate, “to provide greater certainty and avoid a series of concerns.”
Sheinbaum announced that he will prioritize proposals over attacks on his opponents. “We are going to win the debate. We are the only ones who have a project. We have built a project supported, in addition, by a very broad, very plural group,” he said this Wednesday in Guadalajara (Jalisco). “In our case we also use, it has to be like that, science, consciousness. And in the other case [en la oposición], well there is a lot of occurrence. We are certain that our project is the best because, in addition, the people of Mexico want the transformation in our country to continue and advance,” he summarized.
Gálvez said on several occasions that Sheinbaum “is afraid” to debate and that he must “ask permission” from López Obrador to talk about certain topics, such as insecurity, the energy transition and the health system. In March, in Campeche, Gálvez criticized the official candidate for the fall of Metro Line 12, which occurred in 2021, when Sheinbaum was president of Mexico City, and for the collapse of the Rébsamen school, which occurred in the 2017 earthquake. when the candidate governed the Tlalpan mayor's office. “It is contrasting the two projects. All of Mexico already knows how inept Claudia is. She dropped the Metro. There is no doubt about that, he cannot hide that. And it was due to lack of maintenance, for not having the civil protection program. A school collapsed where 19 children and seven adults died,” she stressed. The opposition candidate added that she will bring up in the debate “a couple of things that are not public” and that will serve to “make clear what the difference is between one project and another.”
The MC candidate, Máynez, said that the debate will allow him to rise in the polls. He maintains that 60% of the population has not decided on their vote (although the latest Enkoll survey for EL PAÍS indicates that the number of undecided people is much lower, 9%). In Baja California, on Tuesday, he said that there will be a contrast of ideas between the candidates. For this reason, he has asked the population to think of the debate as if it were a World Cup final or the last episode of a famous series. “Decide by thinking about what would be best, which is the country you want for your children: the one proposed by the candidates of the old politics, or the one proposed by the candidates of the new, from whom we do not give up or resign ourselves?” he asked himself.
The candidates and the candidate will hold two more debates, on April 28 and May 19, also in Mexico City. The second will deal with economic growth, employment and inflation; infrastructure and development; poverty and inequality, and climate change and sustainable development. The public will be able to ask questions to the presidential candidates. The third and final meeting will address social policy; insecurity and organized crime; migration and foreign policy, and democracy, pluralism and division of powers. In this debate there will be no audience and questions from the people will not be collected and face-to-face interaction between the participants will be privileged.
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