National Action Party
Partido Acción Nacional |
|
---|---|
President | Ricardo Anaya Cortés |
Founder | Manuel Gómez Morín |
Founded | 16 September 1939 |
Headquarters | Av. Coyoacán No. 1546 Col. Del Valle, Delegación Benito Juárez, D.F., Mexico City |
Youth wing | (Youth Action) |
Ideology |
Liberal conservatism Christian democracy |
Political position | Centre-right to Right-wing |
International affiliation |
International Democrat Union Centrist Democrat International |
Regional affiliation |
Union of Latin American Parties Christian Democrat Organization of America |
Colors | Blue and White |
Slogan |
Por una patria ordenada y generosa y una vida mejor y más digna para todos (For an orderly and generous homeland and a better and more dignified life for all) |
Seats in the Chamber of Deputies |
109 / 500
|
Seats in the Senate |
38 / 128
|
Governorships |
10 / 32
|
Seats in State legislatures |
291 / 1,124
|
Website | |
http://www.pan.org.mx/ | |
The National Action Party (Spanish: Partido Acción Nacional, PAN), founded in 1939, is one of the three main political parties in Mexico. Since the 1980s has been an important political party winning local, state, and national elections. In 2000, PAN candidate Vicente Fox was elected President for a six-year term; in 2006, PAN candidate Felipe Calderón succeeded Fox in presidency. During the period 2000-2012, both houses of the legislature had PAN pluralities, but the party did not have a majority in either house of the Congress. In the 2006 legislative elections the party won 207 out of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 52 out of 128 Senators. In the 2012 Legislative Elections, the PAN won 38 seats in the Senate, and 114 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.
The National Action Party was founded in 1939 by Manuel Gómez Morín, who had held a number of important government posts in the 1920s and 1930s. He saw the need for the creation of a permanent political party rather than an ephemeral organization to oppose the expansion of power by the post-revolutionary Mexican state. When Gómez Morín was rector of (UNAM) in 1933-35, the government attempted to impose socialist education. In defending academic freedom, Gómez Morín forged connections with individuals and groups that later came together in the foundation of the PAN in September 1939. The Jesuit student organization, Unión Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos, provided a well-organized network of adherents who successfully fought the imposition of a particular ideological view by the state. Gómez Morín was not himself a militant Catholic, but he was a devout believer who rejected liberalism and individualism. In 1939, Gómez Morín and a significant number of UNEC's leadership came together to found the PAN. The PAN’s first executive committee and committees on political action and doctrine also had former Catholic student activists, including Luis Calderón Vega, the father of Felipe Calderón, who was elected President of Mexico in 2006. The PAN’s “Doctrine of National Action” was strongly influenced by Catholic social doctrine articulated in Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931) and rejected Marxist models of class warfare. The PAN’s newspaper, La Nación was founded by another former UNEC member, Carlos Séptien García.