The PAN’s old guard closes ranks behind Ernesto Ruffo, a fellow governor charged with fuel smuggling and organized crime, recasting him as a persecuted ‘political prisoner.’

This article by Juan Carlos G. Partida originally appeared in the July 24, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Guadalajara, Jal., Former PAN governors and former president Vicente Fox denounced a “political persecution” and called Ernesto Ruffo Appel, also a PAN former governor of Baja California, a “political prisoner,” demanding a fair trial after he was bound over for trial for the alleged smuggling of hydrocarbons and organized crime.

At a press conference, the former state leaders of Jalisco, Francisco Ramírez Acuña and Alberto Cárdenas; former president Vicente Fox; and the former governors of Guanajuato Juan Carlos Romero Hicks and Miguel Ángel Márquez, who said they represented 15 former officeholders that emerged from Acción Nacional, asserted that Ruffo’s arrest “with excessive force” is a form of “selective and media-driven justice” by the federal government.

Fox, backed by the other four former governors present, stated that he would “put his hands in the fire” to vouch for Ruffo’s honesty and integrity, and all of them charged that the man bound over for criminal trial was transferred to a maximum-security prison, despite his frail health, being over 70 years old, and the fact that an arrest warrant had previously been denied.

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