Luis María Alcalde ruled out that Tapia, former director of Fonden with Peña Nieto, is a Morena militant; Sheinbaum celebrated that the party created a commission to review the profiles seeking to join the movement.
Mexico City, October 17 (However).– The national leader of Morena, Luisa María Alcaldeassured this Friday that José María Tapia, former director of the Natural Disasters Fund (The foundation) in it Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term and accused of irregularities and scandals, is not a militant of the guinda party, but is close to its ally, the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM).
“In the case of this person, José María Tapia, who at the time was head of Fonden, is not part of Morena. We made a record in the movement’s registry and he is not part of Morena. I understand that he is in the Green Ecologist Party,” said the Mayor at a press conference.
Tapia was a candidate for the PVEM, Morena and Labor Party (PT) alliance for the Mayor of Querétaro capital, which he ended up losing, and is one of the candidates to compete for the governorship of the entity in 2027. Even the current President, Claudia Sheinbaum, promoted him in an electoral video. “Thank you very much, doctor, for your commitment,” Tapia tells her in the spot.
Regarding this case, the Mayor highlighted that precisely the National Council of Morena decided to form the Incorporation Evaluation Commission, to review the profiles that want to join the party and for those who seek candidacies in the next electoral cycles.
“It makes sense, it is a demand from the movement’s own militants, to be careful who joins the ranks of Morena. To have a space for deliberation where antecedents are evaluated, actions that have been done in the past, to be able to evaluate whether or not this incorporation is convenient for our movement,” the Mayor said this Friday.
“This space did not exist in Morena, it is recent. In this space we already have the certainty, confidence, tranquility, that any type of incorporation is evaluated. It is not ‘I invite this or that person’, and they join Morena. Each of the political forces already make their decisions. It gives us certainty to a legitimate demand of the Morena militancy that not all the sums add up, some sums subtract,” he added.
The Mayor indicated that whoever comes from the ranks of another party, which was recently opposed or adversary, will be reviewed by the commission, which has the power to evaluate at the time if they would like to be a candidate for a possible coalition. “We are talking about an instance that did not exist and that today exists under the clear line that today we have to evaluate if it adds to our movement. Yes, Morena must be taken care of. This commission will have a lot of work,” he concluded.
Tapia was director of the The foundation between 2013 and 2016 of Fonden, which disappeared during the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accused of corruption. Tapia was the cause of scandals, such as his trip to Las Vegas during weather emergencies in the country.
The reality is that the Fonden, an instrument established at the end of the 1990s, carried around 21 billion pesos (mdp) of liabilities in 2020, the year of its disappearance, according to figures from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) analyzed at that time by However.
The Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) detected “deficiencies” in contracting procedures and in the execution of work, as well as “improper payments” from public agencies to companies contracted for infrastructure reconstruction or repair services. This is shown by its public accounts from 2014 to 2018, years in which hurricanes such as “Patricia” and “Odile”, storms such as “Boris” and the devastating earthquakes of September 2017 have been recorded.
Sheinbaum celebrates that they evaluate those who want to enter Morena
This morning, President Sheinbaum celebrated that Morena has created a commission to review the profiles of applicants to join the Fourth Transformation movement and those who want to be candidates.
“I think that Morena did well in forming this commission, that it is not up to one person or another to invite someone from another party to be a candidate. But rather that a commission review it and, according to the person’s history, make the decision. I think it’s good,” he said in his morning press conference.
“That part is no longer my responsibility, but I can give my opinion, it seems very good to me that the current Morena leadership has decided, by people who have joined, that perhaps it should have been reviewed in greater detail, that it is no longer the decision of the president, the general secretary, or the Executive Committee, but rather that the commission does an analysis,” he concluded from the National Palace.
On Tuesday, Sheinbaum had described as “ruin” the attitude of the opposition and some media outlets that, in the midst of the emergency due to the intense rains in the country, are looking for culprits among the state and municipal authorities. “As they say… The word didn’t come to me. It’s mean. This search for culprits is mean, the buzzing of some drivers, commentators… Every human being, if they have a little bit of heart, what they seek is to support,” said the federal president.