By MARK LORENZANA

Mexico City Governor Claudia Sheinbaum should buckle down to work and stop the illegal early campaigning, demanded Kenia López Rabadán, deputy coordinator of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) caucus in the Mexican Senate.

On Friday, July 1, Sheinbaum flew to the southeast Mexican state of Tabasco where her party mate, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), inaugurated the controversial Dos Bocas refinery, one of his pet megaprojects. From there, the Mexico City governor traveled to Querétaro on Sunday, July 3, where she participated in a massive political event organized by the State Executive Committee of her party, the leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena).

Ironically, in the same rally in Querétaro, Sheinbaum assured that there is no illegal early campaigning on her part as she addressed a partisan crowd that could be heard chanting  “President! President!” at the Mexico City governor. The political event was officially titled “Cycle of Conferences: Fourth Anniversary of the Victory of the People and the Need for Electoral Reform,” which was essentially a celebration of the presidential victory of López Obrador four years ago.

López Rabadán criticized Sheinbaum for the recent fire in one of the substations of Mexico City’s Metro Line 2, which was caused by a short circuit, and led to the suspension of the section at ground level from the San Antonio Abad station to the end of the line at Tasqueña. The incident also caused a domino effect of delays and interruptions in other stations of Line 2. The suspension lasted for three hours, and 1,300 people had to be evacuated.

López Rabadán said Monday, July 4, that taxes from the people of the capital should be used to fix Mexico City’s Metro Collective Transportation System and pay for its maintenance and not “throw away money for that vulgar Morena propaganda.”

“Seeing taxpayers’ money spent on advertising printed on walls, tarpaulins, T-shirts and  billboards — Morena’s billboards — it’s outrageous,” López Rabadán said. “It demonstrates Sheinbaum’s ambition for power and lack of humanity. We demand that Sheinbaum, instead of illegally promoting herself,  get to work for the people of Mexico City.”

Daily Mexican newspaper Reforma, through its “Templo Mayor” column on Tuesday, June 5, also weighed in on the Metro Line 2 issue, and said, “Good for Claudia Sheinbaum, who opened the door for the capital prosecutor’s office to investigate whether (Monday’s) failure on Metro Line 2 was an act of sabotage. Prosecutor Ernestina Godoy could start looking for the saboteurs among those officials who, under the pretext of austerity, criminally cut the maintenance of Line 2, 3, A, 12, 9 … ”

In May of 2020, Line 12 of the Metro collapsed, killing more than two dozen people and injuring many others, apparently due to poor installations and a lack of adequate maintenance.

On June 16 of this year, Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE) officially opened an investigation into Sheinbaum’s alleged illegal campaigning after the centralist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) filed a complaint with the INE a month earlier, in May, against her for statements in a press conference in Tamaulipas. Through an official letter, the INE asked the Mexico City governor to clarify if she is to be a candidate of Morena for the presidency of Mexico.

Sheinbaum, on Sunday, July 3, denied that her presence at the rally in Querétaro was a campaign act, and said that she attended the event at the request of López Obrador.

“We are here because we have new tasks that the president has given us. I do not come as head of government of Mexico City, but rather as part of this movement (Morena) to talk a little about this new democratic reform that the president has proposed,” Sheinbaum said.