Reforma, Mexico City, December 17, 2022
Claudia Salazar y Martha MartínezThe stubbornness of the PT [Workers Party] and PVEM [Green Party] deputies over obtaining the possibility of transferring votes through coalitions of parties running shared candidates, the so-called "eternal life" clause added in the Senate to the electoral reform legislation, derailed the approval of plan [until the Congress reconvenes on February 1].
MV Note: The Workers and Green Parties are small parties, but they use their votes in Congress to tip the balance of power in the way they see is most favorable for them. They are now allies of Morena [the Movement for National Regeneration].
Morena was started in 2012, by currrent President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, as a grassroots campaign tool in his presidential run as the candidate of the PRD, Party of the Democratic Revolution. When AMLO lost that campaign, he left the PRD, complaining that it had not adequately supported him. He then worked to get Morena qualified as a legal political party. He achieved this in 2014.
He was Morena's presidential candidate in 2018. He and Morena's congressional candidates won by a landslide, the latter winning a two-thirds majority enabling them to pass constitutional amendments. Morena had suddenly decimated the traditional parties, becoming the dominate political force in Mexico.
However, in the 2021 midterm congressional elections, Morena lost its majority in the Senate. It needed the votes of the Workers and Green Parties to achieve a simple majority to pass "secondary" laws, i.e. those that are not constitutional amendments.
AMLO has blamed the National Electoral Institute as being part of "frauds" that caused him the loss of the presidency in both 2006 and 2012. Under the guise of saving money, he proposed constitutional amendments to cut it severely. Not able to gain the two-thirds majorities to pass these, he then proposed a "Plan B" of secondary laws with the same aim.
The Workers and Green Parties saw the changes in how elections are to be run, with indivisible slates of candidates from each party and voters required to vote for one slate, as threatening their possibility of achieving the 3% of total votes cast required to remain legal parties and receive government funding.
Therefore, they have demanded that some means of guaranteeing their continmued existence be included in the electoral legislation. A way to do so was, at first, included in the lower Chamber of Deputies' version, but then removed at AMLO's insistence. The same scenario is now being repeated in the Senate. However, as Congress has adjourned until February1, nothing further can be done to resolve the conflict until then.
If the objective of the federal government was to push the National Electoral Institute (INE) to do "more with less", the little parties took the opportunity to incorporate elements that the original proposal of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not have.
On Thursday night, the Chamber of Deputies approved a hold on the legislation that the Green Party reluctantly presented and after efforts by the Secretary of Interior Government Affairs, Adán Augusto López, to remove the "eternal life" clause. He did this after the Senate had already adjourned.
Thus, the INE gained time until February, when it is expected that the legislative process will be resumed and the windows for the application of the electoral reform will be running.
At his Thursday morning press conference, the President slapped Congress' hand by threatening to veto his own electoral reform if the wording that guaranteed the distribution of votes in a coalition was maintained.
In the Chamber of Deputies, after a meeting in the Secretariat of Internal Government Affairs, the PVEM was forced to propose the withdrawal of the wording. This was endorsed by Morena and the PT. Nevertheless, this stalled the electoral reform.
According to legislative procedure, when a Chamber (in this case, the Chamber of Deputies) makes a modification to a bill that has already been voted on by the reviewing Chamber (in this case, the Senate), the legislation is returned again to the other chamber in order for it to say whether or not it accepts the change. The elimination of the wording forced the Chamber of Deputies to return the bill to the Senate, but it had already adjourned its session and could no longer address the issue.
A scenario to unlock the matter would be to call an extraordinary session, but the Opposition does not see [i.e., will prevent] that there are the votes needed in the Permanent Committee of Congress [that oversees affairs when Congress is adjourned] to achieve the two-thirds majority required for it.
The other scenario is to wait until February 1 for the Senate to address the issue of electoral reform, when the next regular session begins.