The Pemex logo is pictured during the launch of a new franchise and business strategy by Pemex, in Mexico City, Mexico November 15, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo

MEXICO CITY, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Mexican Labor Minister Luisa Maria Alcalde on Friday defended an impending vote to elect a new union leader at state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), fearing the influence of a controversial former union boss may linger.

Politicians, including from the ruling party, have criticized the candidacy of Ricardo Aldana, treasurer of Pemex under longtime union boss Carlos Romero Deschamps, who resigned in 2019 after the president said he was making the subject of an investigation.

Union officials said at a social media event late last year that Aldana would have strong support in the election, urging Pemex workers to vote for him.

Asked if the administration could be sure Romero Deschamps would not retain influence in the union, Alcalde said the Jan. 31 vote would be “free, democratic and fair.”

“You can’t say ‘yes’ to this one, ‘no’ to that one, ‘this one has certain ties, it has this history behind it’, it’s the workers who will decide,” he said. she said at a regular press conference.

In 2019, officials said Romero Deschamps, who has denied any wrongdoing, was being investigated on suspicion of carrying out operations with illicit funds.

Both Aldana and Romero Deschamps are veteran politicians in the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador condemned to historic defeat when elected in 2018.

Cecilia Sanchez, a senator in Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) who is also seeking to lead the union, chastised the Labor Department on Twitter after the press conference and said former bosses were left in charge.

Aldana did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

For decades, Pemex has been accused of being a breeding ground for corruption.

Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom; edited by Grant McCool

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