(HorizonPost.com) – Cities throughout Mexico were flooded with tens of thousands of protesters dressed in pink on Sunday for what organizers called a “March for Democracy” to protest the ruling party ahead of the elections on June 2, the Associated Press reported.
The march was organized by Mexican opposition parties to call for free and fair elections in Mexico and protest government corruption on the day ruling party candidate Claudia Steinbaum officially registered her presidential campaign. Around 90,000 turned up in cities around the country to protest Steinbaum, the front-runner in the presidential election.
Opposition parties believe that Steinbaum would simply continue the policies of Mexico’s current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. While López Obrador is beloved by many Mexican voters, the president has faced accusations that he is a danger to the country’s democracy.
In 2023, López Obrador cut the funding for the National Electoral Institute, the agency that oversees the country’s elections. Additionally, he loosened government oversight of campaign spending.
In echoes of Donald Trump, López Obrador has also attacked reporters and accused judges of conspiring against his administration.
Among the groups that participated in Sunday’s “March for Democracy” were Citizen Power, Civil Society Mexico, National Civic Front, United for Mexico, UNE Mexico, and Yes for Mexico.
Enrique de la Madrid, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), posted a video showing the staggeringly large crowd that joined the march in Mexico City.
Similar marches were organized in one hundred Mexican cities as well as cities in Spain and the United States.
President López Obrador dismissed the planned “March for Democracy,” telling reporters last week that his opponents did not care about democracy. He accused the organizers of the march of seeking to return the corrupt parties to power.
Following Sunday’s mass protests, López Obrador said the protesters’ idea of democracy was corrupt. He insisted that the ruling party wanted a “democracy of the people” and accused the opposition parties of trying to “establish an anti-democracy with electoral fraud.”
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