PRI Veteran Now Its Rival

Mexico’s little-known New Alliance Party on Sunday tapped as its candidate for the presidential election in July a congressman who recently broke with a party that ruled Mexico for 71 straight years.

Roberto Campa quit the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in November amid the fallout from a political dispute between the party’s presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo, and its then-No. 2 official, Elba Esther Gordillo.

Gordillo, a close ally of Campa, left her post in September, when courts rejected her bid to succeed Madrazo, who had stepped down as party leader in August to run for president.

Campa was not expected to secure the nomination but was the unanimous choice of New Alliance’s executive committee Sunday, after Gordillo and former Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda failed to formally seek the position.

The leading contender for the presidency, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, officially registered his candidacy Sunday from the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD.

Lopez Obrador used the opportunity to denounce U.S. policies to combat illegal immigration, including further construction of a border barrier, and called for a more aggressive investigation of last month’s shooting of an apparently illegal border crosser near San Diego.

The former mayor of Mexico City also blasted President Vicente Fox as too weak on immigration issues.

“It’s infuriating to see how President Fox, because he is dedicated to maintaining economic policies that only benefit the elite, does not have the moral or political authority to confront the disgrace of a wall on the border or to protest the deaths of migrants,” he said.