Pact with government further divides Mexican Left

Members of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) distanced themselves on 3 December from the multi-party Pact for Mexico signed earlier by the party's leader Jesús Zambrano Grijalva, echoing the party's earlier reservations about a pact that included the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRD, its political allies and protest groups bitterly challenged the PRI's general-elections victory last July, alleging there had been fraud. The pact appeared to open another crack in this party, following the departure of its former leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador to start his own political movement. The Pact for Mexico, promoted by President Enrique Peña Nieto, was to facilitate legislation through prior party agreements. But the PRD's secretary-general and deputy-head Alejandro Sánchez Camacho stated in a communiqué that the party did not recognize the signature and its political committee would debate Zambrano's initiative, El Universal reported. The daily noted that Sánchez belonged to the National Democratic Left current (Izquierda Democrática Nacional) within the PRD, distinct from Zambrano's reforming New Left current, which apparently had more support. He criticised Zambrano for letting himself be "wooed" by Peña Nieto's declarations and said his signature was "in a private capacity" and had "no validity" for lacking the approbation of party mechanisms. Zambrano defended his decision to sign on 2 December as "a risk worth taking," Milenio reported on 3 December. Differences with other parties persisted, he said, but the PRD was committed to reforms in Mexico. "We are profoundly dissatisfied with the state of our country," with problems too big to be solved by a "single force or a single man," he said.