Morena, Mexico’s ruling party, will use a “double filter” to ensure that its candidates in the 2027 elections have no criminal links and have not committed any other offenses.
Morena President Ariadna Montiel announced the measure at a press conference on Tuesday, explaining that one check on potential candidates will be conducted by the party itself while another is set to be carried out by the federal government’s Security Cabinet, if it agrees to do so.
Montiel said that everyone vying to represent Morena at federal, state and municipal elections in 2027 will have to pass both checks in order to be ratified as candidates. That includes people seeking the office of governor, federal deputy, state deputy, mayor and other municipal positions, she said.
“Each and everyone” will have to pass the filters, Montiel said.
“We’re talking about just over 20,000 primary and substitute candidates,” she said.
The two checks, or filters, will seek to detect any criminal links potential candidates may have as well as determine whether they have committed any crimes, such as violence against women.
Montiel said that people selected as candidates by Morena will also be subjected to criminal checks undertaken by the National Electoral Institute (INE). For Morena candidates, that check will serve as a third filter. The Federal Attorney General’s Office and the Finance Ministry’s Financial Intelligence Unit will assist the INE in its review process. All political parties have the option of asking the INE to conduct checks on their potential candidates, in addition to carrying out their own internal processes.
Morena’s decision to use a double filter to assess the propriety of political aspirants comes almost three months after the unsealing of an indictment in which U.S. prosecutors accuse several Morena party politicians, including Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya and Senator Enrique Inzunza, of drug trafficking in league with the Sinaloa Cartel.
Morena senator Enrique Inzunza Cazarez is accused of drug trafficking. (morena.senado.gob.mx)
How will Morena’s ‘double filter’ work?
Montiel said that Morena will first use “open sources” to check whether potential candidates have engaged in criminal conduct or any other unbecoming behavior including “frivolities” that are incongruent with the party’s “principles.”
Those open sources include social media accounts of potential candidates.
“In open sources you can have access to … a good part of all of our lives,” Montiel said.
Morena officials will also examine letters that land on the desk of Montiel, who became national leader of the party founded by ex-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in May.
“People send me little letters and one finds out about things that one probably wouldn’t find out about otherwise,” the Morena president said.
Regarding the second filter, Montiel said that Morena would ask the Security Cabinet, a group of top federal security officials, to “support us with the review.”
She said that review would be conducted “within the framework” of the Security Cabinet’s “powers” and in accordance with the law.
Montiel noted that there is an online “platform” with information on “everyone” who has been arrested and convicted of committing a crime.
She said that potential Morena candidates “already know” that their past and present conduct will be thoroughly examined. Any political aspirants considered unsuitable “won’t be candidates,” Montiel said.
If someone has done “improper things, he or she won’t be allowed to contest an election as a Morena candidate, she said.
Morena — which is Mexico’s dominant political party, governing at the federal level and in 23 of the 32 federal entities — and the federal Security Cabinet will have to carry out their checks of political aspirants relatively quickly as the formal “electoral process” for the June 2027 elections will commence in September.
With reports from Animal Político, El Heraldo de México and Milenio
