Rubén Rocha attributed the designation of his candidacy to the friendship he maintains with AMLO, despite the fact that the results of Morena’s internal polls did not favor him.
Mexico City, November 13 (However).- The Governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moyarevealed that his candidacy in 2021 was not related to the results of the internal surveys in Morenabut it was a direct decision of former president Andrés Manuel López Obradoror (AMLO), which he attributed to the friendship between the two.
Within the framework of the Culiacán 2025 International Book Fair (FIL), the president admitted that the internal results favored the former mayor of Mazatlan, Luis Guillermo Benitez Torres. However, the decision to name him as a candidate for Governor was made by AMLO, and this message was communicated to him by the then Senator Ricardo Monrealwho currently serves as a federal representative.
“Well, it turns out that he himself (Ricardo Monreal) tells me again – and I’m going to tell them – ‘You know what? It’s not you; they’re going to announce the same guy they brought in before, but I’m going to give you a scoop () they’re going to suspend the announcement, because the President told me, that he doesn’t know why you’re not the one selected either,'” he said at the presentation of the book “The Decision” by journalist Héctor Ponce.
The Governor explained that López Obrador’s decision was based on the friendship that both forged when they were part of the ranks of the extinct Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). “And why do I tell you? Because in reality there was a friendship with the President. When I was a candidate for Governor in ’98 for the PRD, he was the national president of the PRD. And he came here to Sinaloa and accompanied me a lot, there he walked with me in the towns and we became friends,” said Rocha Moya.
In this sense, the Sinaloan president recalled a conversation with the former president when he was already serving as Governor, as he reported that López Obrador based himself on the criterion of “voting intention” to decline his candidacy, despite the fact that Benítez Torres won nine out of ten categories in the appreciation survey.
“The President told me: when I saw him [el resultado de la encuesta] I went straight to where it said voting intention and I saw that you had twice as much as the closest one, so I said ‘and who says that it’s not Rocha who shouldn’t be a candidate?'” he revealed.
It should be noted that Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres, who was relegated from the governorship, said he was the victim of political persecution by Governor Rubén Rocha Moya and the former Secretary of the Interior, Enrique Inzunza. The official, also known as “El Químico”, sought re-election candidacy in Mazatlán, but was separated from his position as Secretary of Tourism of Sinaloa and moved away from public life.
In February 2023, the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Sinaloa, through the Public Ministry, requested the State Congress to initiate a trial to withdraw his constitutional jurisdiction, in order to be in a position to face as an ordinary citizen, two accusations made against him for the crime of irregular performance of public office, during his management as municipal president of Mazatlán.
“C. Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres. Present. With this date I have been informed by the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Sinaloa, that the institution of the Public Ministry has requested from the H. Congress of the State the prior declaration of origin referred to in articles 135 and 136 of the Political Constitution of the State, in order to open a judicial instance in the investigation of facts that the law indicates as crimes against the public servant that concern him as a defendant,” said Rubén Rocha in his weekly conference on February 7, 2023.
“Given this, considering that it is the duty of those of us who assume ourselves as participants in the Fourth Transformation of public life in Mexico, to observe ethical conduct, consistent with the principles and postulates that uphold our position in relation to the fight against corruption in the exercise of the power conferred on me by article 65, section II, of the State’s Political Constitution, I have determined to remove him from the position of Secretary of Tourism, with effect from the same day today,” he added.