MEXICO CITY: The front-runner in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election said on Saturday she was being inundated with hate-filled calls and messages after her phone number was released online.

The privacy violation for Claudia Sheinbaum comes days after the incumbent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, revealed the phone number of a journalist investigating his entourage’s alleged drug cartel links.

Sheinbaum, candidate for the ruling left-wing party, posted on X that she was being deluged with “calls and hate messages because someone published my cell phone number on social networks.” “What they want to do is obvious, once again their attacks are as crude as they are harmless,” she said, adding that she would change her phone number.

The former Mexico City mayor faces Xochitl Galvez, from the opposition coalition, and Jorge Alvarez Maynez of the Citizens’ Movement party in the June poll. Lopez Obrador is barred from running because of Mexico’s one-term limit. One of the president’s sons, Jose Ramon Lopez Beltran, has also denounced the leak of his private number online.

Lopez Obrador described that leak as “shameful,” and accused his political opponents of being behind it.

On Thursday at a regular press briefing, Lopez Obrador revealed the phone number of a New York Times reporter, along with questions put to him by The New York Times. The newspaper has reported that US law enforcement officials spent years examining claims that people close to Lopez Obrador took millions of dollars from criminal gangs.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2024