National Action Party President Marko Cortés. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

In a new statement, 13 former presidents of Mexico’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) demanded that the party’s current president Marko Cortés not renew his leadership position following the electoral loss of PAN presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez to the National Regeneration Movement’s (Morena) Claudia Sheinbaum on June 2.

“The vote we obtained shows a clear and constant downward trend. The message from our people is forceful and clear. They shouted loudly to the PAN: change or leave,” read the statement, which was endorsed by previous PAN leaders Ernesto Ruffo, Marco Adame, Carlos Medina, Fernando Canales, Francisco Ramírez Acuña and Alberto Cárdenas, among others.

“The PAN must change and update its political project to the realities of the 21st century in which we live, prioritizing security, overcoming poverty and achieving social equity,” continued the message.

The former party presidents accused Cortés of colluding with allegedly corrupt state PAN leaders – known as “padroneros” – to obtain his leadership over the party and subsequently demanded that Cortés not seek the renewal of his presidency.

“We demand not to advance the process of succession to the party presidency with agreements reached with the ‘padroneros’ that have done so much damage to the party,” continued the statement. “Our president, Marko Cortés, must bear witness that we must manage our internal democracy as we demand from the government throughout the nation.”

“We demand to open the PAN to citizens who are not members of the party, but who support us and want to participate so that the PAN correctly assumes leadership against the dictatorship that Morena wants for Mexico,” concluded the former PAN presidents.

Meanwhile, Gálvez’s campaign coordinator Max Cortázar took things up a notch by saying that Cortés should immediately resign from his position as the head of the PAN.

“When Germán Martínez was president of the PAN in 2009 and the electoral results were not the best, he still obtained twice as many federal deputies as those that the PAN now obtained under the leadership of Marko. And Germán, then, in congruence, resigned from the PAN presidency,” Cortázar said on Tuesday, June 11.

“Staying in your job is pretending that things are fine. They are not. You have to recognize the results. Even in a sports team, when a team is eliminated, the coach is fired the same night of failure,” added Cortázar.