Breathe
By Sonia Serrano
On May 6, a photograph taken at Casa Jalisco, showing Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, Guadalajara's Mayor, Pablo Lemus Navarro, the Secretary of Social Assistance, Alberto Esquer Gutiérrez, and Senator Clemente Castañeda Hoeflich, was sent informally, but through the respective heads of Social Communication. The last three are the formal aspirants to the candidacy for the state government for Movimiento Ciudadano.
What is relevant about the photograph is that it is the first time that these four people have met publicly. Of the previous meetings, there were only rumors, including an alleged trip, accompanied by their wives, for the inauguration of a luxurious hotel on the southern coast of the state, on the privatized beach of El Tamarindo.
Those photographed said, also informally, that the meeting was to guarantee that there will be a level playing field in the competition, that it will be up to the party to decide and that it was agreed that they will not go ahead and campaign in municipalities to prevent other parties from taking action against them.
Three days later the differences began again, as Clemente Castañeda attended a meeting with all the characteristics of a campaign event in Tepatitlán de Morelos, which earned him the complaint of the other aspirants and a kind of scolding from the governor.
In addition, the leader of Movimiento Ciudadano in the state, Manuel Romo, had to go out in a press conference to assure that there are more aspirants and mentioned Senator Verónica Delgadillo García and the municipal president of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Salvador Zamora Zamora.
What is certain is that the dispute in Movimiento Ciudadano for the candidacy for the state government is open and internal conflicts will surely intensify.
Until a few months ago, it seemed that the natural candidate of the oranges would be Pablo Lemus. In fact, the last four governors of Jalisco have jumped from the municipal presidency of the capital to the governorship: the PAN's Francisco Javier Ramírez Acuña and Emilio González Márquez, the PRI's Jorge Aristóteles Sandoval Díaz and the current governor of Movimiento Ciudadano, Enrique Alfaro.
Pablo Lemus came to MC from the private sector. He was president of Coparmex and from business circles he became municipal president of Zapopan for two three-year terms and then mayor of Guadalajara. He reached this last position in a circumstantial way, when for reasons that are still unknown, the former mayor Ismael del Toro Castro resigned from the candidacy to repeat in the position.
This placed Pablo Lemus in the starting line. However, Alberto Esquer also raised his hand from the state cabinet and Salvador Zamora from the traditional emecistas. Esquer comes from PAN and was invited to join MC by Clemente Castañeda, when both were local deputies.
Salvador Zamora and Verónica Delgadillo also coincided in that legislature. Somehow, all of them are part of Clemente Castañeda's current, so their mention as aspirants could be based on that old PRI custom of putting more names on the table to avoid a frontal clash between the real aspirants.
In fact, Salvador Zamora has not been in the last meetings with the governor, although in the one at Casa Jalisco it was assured that he was not in the city and was received a few days later.
Clemente Castañeda's appearance as a candidate is recent. It arose from the concern of the governor's immediate group of losing control of the project if Pablo Lemus is the candidate and was strengthened when the mayor of Guadalajara distanced himself from the lawsuit against the University of Guadalajara and questioned the MC's demonstration before the International Book Fair, calling those who organized it "dragged".
Lemus is widely leading in the polls. However, the argument of those backing Clemente Castañeda is that MC can win the election, no matter who its candidate is.They say that at the meeting in El Tamarindo the governor asked his three guests what their plan B was. Alberto Esquer talked about the Senate or Guadalajara. Clemente Castañeda of repeating as senator and, when it was Pablo Lemus' turn, he said that if he was not the candidate for governor, he preferred not to be on the ballot.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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