Mexico City, Jul 14 (AP) Mexico's president plowed ahead with attacks against the opposition front-runner for the 2024 presidential elections Friday, despite a ruling by electoral authorities that he has been violating equity and neutrality rules with such comments.

President Andres Manuel López Obrador has spent weeks using his morning press briefing to criticize Xochitl Galvez, a plain-talking senator and former indigenous affairs official. Lopez Obrador is barred from running again after the end of his six-year term, and Galvez hasn't been nominated yet by opposition parties, but she has been gaining momentum.

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The complaints commission of the National Electoral Institute ruled late Thursday that Lopez Obrador's remarks “apparently violated the principles of equity, neutrality impartiality,” and ordered the president to “avoid commenting on electoral matters.”

Lopez Obrador claimed Friday that electoral authorities "are trying to silence me" and violate his freedom of expression. He argued that — because his office had not been formally notified of the ruling — he could continue criticizing Galvez.

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“We still have time, before they want to limit me,” López Obrador said, before repeating claims that Galvez was “the representative of the mafia of power” and that her company had received tens of millions in government contracts.

Gálvez has responded that even Lopez Obrador's own administration has hired her information technology company to do government work, showing how good the firm is.

“My career didn't start in politics,” Gálvez wrote in her Twitter account. “I am proud to have created jobs for hundreds of Mexican families.”

“The president is upset by tax-paying jobs and businesses, because he has never seen one,” she wrote. “He is used to (getting money) in plain envelopes.”

Gálvez is an independent who serves in the Senate for the conservative National Action Party. She comes from a small-town, partly indigenous background, and has often taken more progressive stances.

After decades in the 20th century in which the former ruling party used government funds to influence elections, Mexico passed strict rules in the late 1990s saying the government had to remain neutral in elections and not use public funds to support or oppose candidates.

Article 134 of the Constitution, which says government media, advertising and public relations must only be used for informative or educational purposes, not for or against any politician. The government pays to produce and broadcast the morning press briefings, held at the lavish National Palace where Lopez Obrador lives.

For several decades, Mexican presidents have avoided — and in recent years, been legally prohibited from — making openly partisan campaign statements. That is in part because Mexico is a highly centralized country where the president wields enormous power, both political and financial.

Lopez Obrador's behaviour could be compared to then-outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama lashing candidate Donald Trump regularly and at length at White House press briefings in 2016, or George W. Bush using such briefings to regularly attack Obama in 2008.

Parties are currently still in primary season, and the official campaigns for the June 2024 presidential elections do not formally start until September

Lopez Obrador has already run afoul of electoral courts on precisely this issue.

Earlier this year, a federal electoral tribunal ruled that Lopez Obrador had violated rules prohibiting the use of government resources in campaigns, related to comments he made during the run-up to two state elections held in Mexico in June.

In March, López Obrador used his morning press briefing to urge Mexicans not to vote for opposition candidates in the two state races, saying “don't vote for the conservative Alliance … not one vote for the conservatives.”

Gálvez has asked to be allowed to respond to the president's comments at the daily press briefing, and even got a court injunction allowing her to do so, but Lopez Obrador refused, saying she wanted to “play politics” at the briefing. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)