PAN members from all over Mexico responded to the call to celebrate the PAN National Assembly on Saturday in Mexico City. The National Council, made up of state leaders, mayors, governors and activists, with the absence of leaders such as former presidents Felipe Calderon and Vicente Fox and its former leader Marco Cortes, has given the green light to the legal changes that complete the group’s relaunch. The shift in leadership, with its re-establishment overtones, announced last month, has seen some nuances. The party’s new phase, built on an ambitious marketing strategy that included changing the image, announcing with great fanfare the breakaway from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the end of coalitions with other parties, witnessed a sharp reversal. The country’s leaders have shown their strength. In the set of amendments approved on Saturday, coalitions were hidden to make way for linkages with other political parties. The powder keg that was unleashed in the divorce with the PRI in twelve states, where PAN leaders were reluctant to break with the Tricolor Party and others in negotiations with the Citizens’ Movement, has been extinguished by the new wording of the law.
Jorge Romero, the leader who promoted the change of course, made no new statements. The victory speech was preserved, followed by the slogan: Homeland, Family, and Freedom. The promise to remove the Morena Cartel from the presidency in 2030 and snatch a qualified majority in the legislature for the 2027 midterm elections has been crushed. The leader insisted that the PAN would take to the streets. “We will walk with people and look them in the eyes,” he said. The reforms introduced to the National Labor Administration documents achieved consensus. The PAN’s 2,400 delegates gave the green light to the amendments. Something different was not expected. Dissident votes from the national leader’s voice were absent, with no less than 1,200 delegates. From a distance and with clear evidence, they accused of irregularities in the assembly, such as identity theft, and council members whose identities were impersonated by other figures.
With this gathering, PAN took its first step to launch a relaunch process that was losing steam as the days passed. The full openness of the Mexican party to citizens’ nominations, an explicit affiliation with militants, as well as a provision reflecting rotation in leadership and gender equality, are part of the most visible changes approved by the National Assembly this weekend.
The end of coalitions, one of the most important components of the relaunching process, and the rhetoric calling for going it alone, had no place in Romero’s speech. The wording of the amendments to Article 103 of the Guidance Document is far from the extinction of coalitions, at least locally. The approved reform states that “due to participation in any elections through any type of association with other political parties, candidates will be selected in accordance with an agreement registered with the relevant electoral authority.” This convincing formulation, say members of the National Action Party, linked to or close to Romero, is nothing more than allowing alliances in the United States. Thus, the leadership has suppressed the attempted rebellion that arose in dozens of entities that maintain strong marriages with the Institutional Revolutionary Party and others that exchange winks with the citizens’ movement.
Members of the National Action Party have identified another of the most important points in their plan, which aims to regain ground and not disappear: which is to completely open the party to citizens, including their candidates. Open primaries, polls, direct election of active militants, and the mixed method are the agreed-upon formulas for selecting candidates. They tried to cover all aspects, although, according to PAN leaders, the models ran the risk of opening the door to the appointment of less competitive candidates, by creating too many female candidates.
The PAN’s amendments focus on selecting candidates, but also on recruiting freelance fighters. All with one click, Romero said. At this point, the finer details become important. The National Action Party has proposed to register, around the clock, all the fighters it can to add to a meager register of 320,000 members, which is close to the maximum percentage required by the National Electoral Institute to maintain the register (256,000 members), a number that must be approved in March of next year. To this end, Romero announced the hiring of an army of 150,000 people who would knock on doors throughout the country in a rapid search for militants.
The approval of reforms to the statute has left a poisoned candy in the equal rotation for the next PAN leadership election in 2027. A ruling from the Electoral Tribunal ordered the party to make changes that would ensure the rotation. This included issuing an invitation in which only women could participate. In exchange for this court ruling, changes were introduced that would allow Romero to be re-elected in 2027. Although he announced that if his relaunch in the intermediate elections did not yield electoral results, he would step aside in the leadership of the party.
Romero hit the government of Claudia Sheinbaum in his speech. There was nothing more powerful. “Mexico wants, deserves and demands the restoration of peace. Unfortunately, we live in a country where violence prevails,” he said. Then moved on November 15, the so-called Generation Z March, which was marked by a confrontation between police and demonstrators. An episode in which the PAN condemned the government of Mexico before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington. The right-wing party accused the state of repression, violence, and violating individual guarantees. The arrival of Ernestina Godoy to the Attorney General’s Office was not addressed, an issue that the opposition could exploit to attack the ruling party due to the lawyer’s proximity to Sheinbaum. The silence refers more than one member of the National Action Party to the leader’s history with the new Public Prosecutor. From the Mexico City Public Prosecutor’s Office, Godoy brought investigative files against PAN heavyweights, including Romero, in the so-called Real Estate Cartel, an alleged corruption network in construction matters that implicated PAN figures. It is an issue that has exhausted national unity and there are no plans to revive it.
The PAN ended its meeting with a blank result, with a few absences and a speech that was disqualified, according to PAN members. Romero’s message was followed by the vacancy of the large place where the meeting was held, located west of the country’s capital. “It was a very wonderful message,” some of the leaders present said. For others, such as Xochitl Gálvez, the opposition candidate who campaigned for the presidency against Claudia Sheinbaum, the openness to the citizens and possible break from the PRI was a success. “The closedness that characterized the National Action Party for many years, where it always had the same candidates, made people distance themselves from the party,” he concluded.