Va Por México Alleges Criminal Intervention in 2021 Elections
Photo: Google
By KELIN DILLON
In a new filing with the Organization of American States (OAS), Mexico’s three-party Va por México alliance consisting of the National Action Party (PAN), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has accused Mexican organized crime of interfering with the nation’s 2021 electoral process through ballot box stuffing, violence and intimidation, ensuring victories of the organizations’ preferred candidates across seven Mexican states.
“Armed groups kidnapped and immobilized entire campaign teams, seized polling stations and forced citizens to cast their vote,” read the file, which similarly detailed the murder of 27 candidates who were murdered throughout the 2021 electoral process, the deadliest on record for Mexico.
“These threats were extended into the post-election period, through a law of silence imposed on everything that had happened.”
Though the presence of organized crime was felt throughout the country approaching June 2021’s midterm elections, some states experienced more issues than others, as more than 30 instances of violence were recorded in Veracruz, Michoacán, Sinaloa, the State of Mexico (Edoméx), Guerrero, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato each, as per Va por México’s filing.
The file similarly detailed instances where organized crime members held citizens at gunpoint to force them to vote for the in-power and Va por México opponent National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party, the kidnapping of a candidate in Culiacán so that the kidnappers could reportedly “avoid buying votes,” and a number of decapitated human heads thrown into a box to intimidate voters in Tijuana, Baja California.
“Despite what has been stated here, on Monday, June 7, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) pointed out that ‘the people behaved very well, those who belong to organized crime generally behaved well, with very few acts of violence by these groups,’” continued the file, alleging AMLO’s complacency in elections’ the bloodshed.
Va por México likewise submitted their file to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), seeking out international intervention into Mexico’s electoral violence issue.