After 72 years, the PRI political party loses in Colima

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More than 70 years of uninterrupted Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) power in the small Pacific coast state of Colima will come to an end later this year after a Morena party candidate triumphed at Sunday’s election for governor.

The PRI, which ruled Mexico for much of the 20th century in what Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa described as a “perfect dictatorship,” has been in office in Colima since 1949.

But its candidate for governor, Mely Romero Celis, who ran on a ticket supported by the National Action Party and the Democratic Revolution Party, was defeated in Sunday’s election by Morena-New Alliance aspirant Indira Vizcaíno Silva, who attracted about 33% of the vote.

Indira Vizcaíno Silva

Vizcaíno, a lawyer, former federal government delegate and ex-federal deputy, will take office on November 1, becoming Colima’s second female governor after Griselda Álvarez, who governed between 1979 and 1985 as Mexico’s first female governor.

Colima voters were literally fed up with the rampant violence in their state and dissatisfied with the PRI for failing to combat it.

But whether Morena — which as Mexico’s ruling party since 2018 has been unable to reduce the nation’s sky-high homicide numbers — can bring the change to Colima that voters are looking for remains to be seen.

Source: El Universal

El Universal