Mexican president's party hit with 'protest vote' over gay marriage

Mexico City, Mexico, Jun 7, 2016 / 15:19 pm

Just a few weeks after Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto announced measures to legalize gay marriage and homosexual adoption throughout the country, his party suffered a severe setback in the June 5 elections.

Leading pro-family advocates have described the situation as a "protest vote" against the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), to which the president belongs.

Elections were held June 5 for governor in 12 states. According to the preliminary tally, waiting for official results on June 8, the PRI lost the elections in 7 states.

The Mexican press has called the vote a "severe setback" and "black Sunday" for the PRI. These elections, according to many analysts, serve as an indication as to what the 2018 presidential vote may be like.

The president of the Mexican Council for the Family(ConFamilia), Juan Dabdoub Giacomán, told CNA that he clearly sees in the defeat of the PRI the influence of the "protest vote" that pro-family and pro-marriage advocates called for in the country.

After Peña Nieto announced he would promote a constitutional reform to recognize gay marriage throughout the country, as well as amendments to the Federal Civil Code to allow homosexual adoption, more than 1,000 organizations joined together to form the National Front for the Family (FNF).

Heading up this front are the National Union of Parents, Family Network, ConFamilia, CitizenGo, HazteOir, Dilo Bien, and Mexico is One for the Children, among others.

"Yesterday was a historic day in Mexico," Dabdoub Giacomán emphasized on June 6, and underscored that the protest vote called for by the National Front for the Family was "a mechanism to oppose the decision of President Peña Nieto to regularize so-called homosexual 'marriages' and adoption."

"The important part was that in less than three weeks an organization was created that was able to mobilize an entire country against an initiative of the president attacking the family, calling for a protest vote against him and his party," he said.

However, the president of ConFamila noted, "this doesn't end here, because this same week we are going to meet to plan actions that will continue until the 2018 presidential elections."

"We don't want a repeat (in the presidency) of a party like the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has openly declared itself, through the voice of its president, as an anti-family party," he stated.

For his part, Carlos Alberto Ramírez Ambríz, president of the Dilo Bien International movement and spokesman for the National Front for the Family, said that Peña Nieto "launched an attack against the family thinking that there would be no consequences for their political operations."

"However, Mexico has spoken at the ballot box; the affront against the family has cost the president and the party that supports him dearly," he emphasized.

Ramírez Ambríz underscored that "Mexican society is tired of the corruption, impunity and arrogance that the PRI represents in Mexico and that fatigue was seen reflected in the recent elections."

"This weekend the family won! It was an historic event for Mexico; everything indicates that society is waking up and we're not going to go on allowing a corrupt political system to continue governing."

The spokesman for the National Front for the Family said that his organization "is driving efforts to raise awareness about the initiative and join more and more Mexicans to it."

"It will also continue efforts so that the political cost is wider not just against the party pushing the issue but against all those players that approve and encourage this type of initiative," he said.