The ruling Morena (National Regeneration Movement) party announced its new leadership following internal elections held on Sunday in Mexico City. Luisa María Alcalde, currently serving as interior minister, was elected unanimously as the new leader of the party founded by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2011. The president’s son, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, was chosen to be the party’s secretary of organization.
“The people chose continuity and the time of women, [they] chose Claudia Sheinbaum and in Morena, we cannot let them down,” said 37-year-old Alcalde in her speech to the party assembly. “I will not let you down because I know the events, the struggles, the risks, the sorrows and the joys of this national regeneration movement since its founding.”
Alcalde, who will assume office for a three-year term on Oct. 1 — the same day as President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum — takes the helm of a powerful party that not only won the presidency in the June 2 elections, but also governs 24 of Mexico’s 32 states and has majorities in both houses of Congress.
Morena has already taken advantage of its legislative power to approve AMLO’s controversial judicial reform bill earlier this month. On Thursday, the lower house, where the ruling party and its allies have a supermajority, also approved another constitutional reform which would put the National Guard under military control. The bill is expected to be discussed in the Senate this week.
At his morning press conference on Monday, AMLO congratulated the party delegates on their selection and described Alcalde as an “extraordinary” and “honest” woman. Prior to her appointment as the country’s youngest-ever interior minister in June 2023, Alcalde had served as labor minister and previously as a federal deputy in Congress.
López Beltrán, the second of AMLO’s four sons, has been active in the party for years and is also a businessman. “We all know that he [AMLO] will continue to be present in this party, with his example and his legacy. Our job … will be to uphold that legacy,” he said in a speech on Sunday, while also affirming that his 70-year-old father will be retiring from political life.
🇲🇽MEXICO— Long-suspected to be a major player behind the scenes & with his closest friends winning lucrative Govt. contracts in the past few years, the son of Mexico’s President was appointed today a top position in his father’s party in what is the birth of a political dynasty. https://t.co/NBhb8uBwhy
— José Díaz Briseño (@diazbriseno) September 22, 2024
Some critics have accused Morena of hypocrisy by awarding a position to López Beltrán since one of its party tenets is to eradicate nepotism. Reforma newspaper correspondent José Díaz Briseño described the Morena election as “the birth of a political dynasty” in a post to X.
Sheinbaum dismissed the allegations of nepotism at a press conference on Monday and said that López Beltrán is a “great organizer” who had the right to put himself forward for the position now that AMLO is on the cusp of retirement.
In Sheinbaum’s speech to the assembly on Sunday, she outlined a 10-point vision for the future of the movement and warned against becoming a “state party,” as she stepped down from Morena to be “president for all Mexicans.”
“… The government of the Republic fulfills its duties for the transformation of the country and the party fulfills its own,” she said.
With reports from Reforma, El Financiero, EFE and El País
