Alejandro “Alito” Moreno, head of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. Photo: Google

By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS

Mexican opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) national leader Alejandro “Alito” Moreno on Friday, Dec. 2, said that despite “threats and political persecution,” his party will vote against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial electoral reform, which would essentially eliminate the country’s most-important electoral institution and consolidate power for AMLO’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party.

Moreno has for nearly a year been pressured by Morena to support the president’s initiatives, and has consistently been accused of money laundering, tax evasion and other white-collar crimes by Morena politicians.

In particular, Campeche Governor Layda Sansores, who is a staunch Morena militant and who replaced Moreno in that post, has undertaken a campaign of the dissemination of compromising audio tapes in which the PRI leader allegedly committed fraud while head of the gulf coast state.

Currently, Moreno, who is now a federal deputy, is under investigation in Campeche on charges of illicit enrichment and tax fraud.

Bowing to Morena pressure earlier this year in exchange for a slackening of the alleged charges against him, Moreno caved in to the president’s initiative to maintain troops on civilian streets through 2028 by ordering PRI legislators to vote in favor of the president’s bill.

But while Moreno has been known to “change his mind” when threatened by Morena in the past, this time he seems to have dug in his heels in defense of Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE).

“Go ahead, set the day and time (for the vote in the Chamber of Deputies),” Moreno replied on social media to new, unveiled threats by Morena and AMLO to bring formal charges against him.

“You can threaten and persecute me all you want, but the PRI will vote against (AMLO’s proposed) electoral reform.”