Thousands of people demonstrated this Sunday simultaneously in a hundred cities in Mexico and abroad to protest against the electoral reform that López Obrador’s party approved last Wednesday and which, among other measures, proposes cutting the budget, autonomy and the sanctioning capacity of the National Electoral Institute (INE). The conveners denounce that the legislative changes promoted by the ruling party constitute a “democratic attack” and put at risk the survival of an independent body that managed to end, two decades ago, the one-party regime that characterized the Mexican political system during the 20th century.
The second largest square in the world, the Zócalo in Mexico City, was too small to accommodate all the people who decided to respond to the call to defend the INE. Dressed in pink garments, alluding to the identity color of the electoral body, and carrying signs denouncing that “The INE does not touch itself”, the crowd gathered yesterday in front of the doors of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) to demand that the electoral reform be invalidated as it is considered unconstitutional. The opposition has announced that it will present appeals against the changes introduced last Wednesday, while the magistrates continue to evaluate the legality of a first package of measures that the Government approved at the end of last year.
The conflict between López Obrador and the INE dates back to the presidential elections of 2006 and 2012, when the current Mexican president denounced an alleged electoral fraud, without offering evidence in exchange, to justify his defeat at the polls against Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña. Grandson. After he came to power, in 2018, AMLO has made the INE the main target of his attacks, going so far as to describe his advisors as “phonies”, “racists” and “public servants without principles or ideals”. Under the pretext that it is the “most expensive electoral body in the world”, the Mexican president has promoted a massive cut in his budget that, according to reports from the INE itself, puts the organization of this year’s state elections at risk, in Coahuila and the State of Mexico, as well as the 2024 presidential elections.
If the courts fail to stop AMLO’s electoral reform, the INE will have to organize the elections with $200 million less in its budget, which would force them to lay off at least 6,000 workers and could mean that some polling stations cannot open due to lack of staff. The reform will also reduce the agency’s ability to sanction officials who violate electoral laws, especially in propaganda matters, a matter that fully affects López Obrador, who has been the subject of several investigations for using government media to promote his candidates.
“They want to mutilate the INE because the vote is in the way,” said Beatriz Pages, co-founder of the opposition alliance ‘Va por México’, before the crowd gathered in the Zócalo, “here is hope. We are ready to fight a long battle in favor of of democracy and to rebuild a new nation”. The lawyer José Ramón Cossío, former minister of the Supreme Court of Justice, asked his colleagues in office to react: “We know about the difficulties of your work, of the pressures from those who want to appropriate the electoral system, we want to tell the ministers that we trust them, in their ability to understand the seriousness of the decisions to preserve the democratic life of the country”.
The main opposition figures were present at the demonstration to show unity against the government project. The president of the PRI, Alejandro Moreno, assured that “we are on the side of democracy, together we make ourselves heard so that the country’s democratic institutions are not destroyed.” Despite the fact that the capital authorities had surrounded the National Palace, where López Obrador lives and works, with metal fences, the demonstration was held peacefully and there were no incidents to be regretted. This is the second major protest suffered by López Obrador so far in his six-year term and, on this occasion, it was carried out simultaneously in more than 100 cities around the world. In Spain, where 66,000 Mexicans live, several dozen people gathered in front of the Mexican embassy in Madrid and the Barcelona consulate.
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