MEXICO CITY (AP) – A Mexican ruling party candidate charged with rape and who later had his candidacy canceled by regulatory authorities on other grounds said on Sunday he will not allow elections in his home state unless allowed to participate .
Félix Salgado is committed to the governorship of the troubled state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast. While two women accused him of rape, he has not been charged and received permission from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party to proceed.
But in late March, election supervisors ordered him to disqualify, saying he had not reported the campaign spending. The country’s electoral court last week ordered the Federal Electoral Institute to reconsider that decision.
Salgado leads a caravan of vehicles to protest outside the Mexico City electoral institute’s office, and on Sunday, Salgado said, unless that decision is reversed, he will not allow the June elections in Guerrero to take place without him.
“If we are on the ballot, there will be elections,” Salgado told a crowd of supporters in Iguala, Guerrero. “If there are no elections, there will be no elections.”
The threat is entirely credible in Guerrero, home to the seaside town of Acapulco.
Guerrero is a violence-plagued state with a patchwork of drug gangs, vigilantes and militant peasant groups that sometimes overlap. Elections have been partially disrupted in the past, and many former governors have been forced from office before ending their term.
López Obrador has defended Salgado and criticized women’s groups who objected to his candidacy, calling it “an attack on democracy.”
The National Electoral Institute ruled in late March that Salgado had failed to declare the money he had spent in the primary trial and that his candidacy would no longer be officially recognized. But the court ordered the institute to reconsider that decision.
In Mexico, midterm elections for the state and federal government will be held on June 6.
Salgado won the nomination of López Obrador’s Morena party despite protests from women’s rights activists. He has not personally handled the charges, although his attorney has denied them.
Salgado has not been charged; the limitation period ran up in one case and the other is still under investigation.
Nicknamed Toro or “Bull”, Salgado is a former federal legislator and mayor of Acapulco who was known in the past for questionable behavior. He was filmed acting with the police in Mexico City in 2000.