Leading Candidate’s Achilles Heel Puts Mexico’s Ruling PRI Party in a Bind Eric Martin - Bloomberg
go to original September 17, 2017

Miguel Angel Osorio Chong (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

Mexico’s Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong has overseen a surge in the murder rate and the escape from prison of an infamous drug lord, yet remains the ruling party’s most popular contender for next year’s presidential election. That doesn’t say much for their chance of success.

While members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party back Osorio Chong, many analysts see him as un-electable in a campaign where voter dissatisfaction with public security will be a top issue.

Osorio Chong is running more than 10 points behind leftist former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in recent surveys, while polling twice as much as his nearest competitor from within the PRI. The party must now decide whether to choose someone with less name recognition but a broader potential appeal as its risks slipping into third place behind Lopez Obrador and the National Action Party.

The PRI need to "establish themselves as the alternative to Lopez Obrador, and it’s not going to happen with Osorio Chong,” said Jorge Chabat, a political scientist at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching, a Mexico City-based university. “He’s clearly vulnerable based on the portfolio he’s been in charge of.”

The press office of the interior ministry declined to comment on questions about Osorio Chong’s political future or make him available for an interview.

Under Osorio Chong’s watch, homicides in Mexico jumped 29 percent in the first half of the year to more than 12,000, the most for any comparable period since at least 2001, according to data from the nation’s interior ministry. That includes the previous deadliest years of Mexico’s drug war under President Enrique Pena Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderon, from 2010 to 2012.

Read the rest at Bloomberg

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