Reforma, Mexico City, December 7, 2022
By Martha Martinez and Claudia Salazar
Early this morning, with unusual haste by means of a legislative initiative presented minutes before its discussion, Morena [the Movement for National Regeneration] and its allies approved reforms to six laws that remove powers from the National Electoral Institute (INE) and combines the Federal Electoral Court with it.
As these are reforms to secondary laws [ones detailing the specifics of the implementation of Articles of the Constitution] that do not require a two-thirds majority vote, the pro-government alliance passed the laws by a simple majority.
The Opposition accused Morena of "a coup" and called the process "dirty" and "illegal". Various opposition speakers presented motions to suspend the debate of the bills and send them to committees [the usual first step in the legislative process], but they were rejected.
...Citizens' Movement [MC] deputy Salomón Chertorivski noted that the decision was unprecedented.
"It is a spurious reform, a shameful procedure. I anticipate that the Senate will not dispense with the normal procedures and the [legislation] will have to be discussed. If they vote in favor, we will see them in [the Supreme] Court. Now, there is a precedent of their voting unilateraly, so they will do this to us again. It's the powers that be."...
After the round of opposition speakers presented their positions, the deputies of the opposition bloc left the full session of the Chamber of Deputies in protest of the "legislative dirtiness" and did not participate in the vote.
At the podium, PAN [conservative National Action Party] member Jorge Triana said that AMLO [President Andrés Manuel López Obrador] was promoting "a gross sabotage" of the 2024 [presidential and congressional] electoral process. Surrounded by PAN deputies, who covered their mouths with stickers that had the legend, "Let Mexico speak", Triana then led the exit from the chamber in silence.
The members of Morena and its allied parties yelled "Out with the traitors!"
Morena member Leonel Godoy said that the opposition´s abandonment showed an undemocratic attitude and affirmed that the reforms to 6 secondary laws were intended to save 3 billion pesos [US$150 million].
Carlos Puente, of the Green Party, supported the vote made in favor by his party for "Plan B", "because the opposition closed any spaces" for an agreement. The PVEM [Mexico Green Party] amended the government bill to add provisions guaranteeing that the changes in the electoral law would not affect their party's registration and would allow them to keep surpluses in their public financing for several years. [MV Note: The Green Party is not a pro-ecological group but a small party that uses its seats opportunistically in Congress to support whoever is the likely winner, (now Morena) thus serving to tip the balance of power.]
In a united front, the opposition block (PAN, PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution, which held hegemonic control of power in Mexico from the 1930s to the 1990s], PRD [Party of the Democratic Revolution, a leftist coalition] and MC) had previously contained the intention of the president to suppress the INE through a constitutional reform. However, the Secretary of Internal Affairs, Adán Augusto López, at midnight, delivered to the Congress the so-called "Plan B" with non-constitutional modifications to secondary electoral laws.
Among the most important changes is the disappearance of INE directorates [subdivisions], the removal of its strategic Executive Board, making state electoral bodies temporary, and reducing the number of electoral district boards from 300 to 260.
The reform also modifies the beginning of the electoral campaign period from September to November of the year prior to an election, to avoid the oversaturation of citizens.
It also merges the PREP, an early count that accumulates the counts of polling stations, with a real-time vote count so that the results are known the same night as the election.
Electoral "Plan B" also expands electoral rights that until now did not exist or were only implemented through INE guidelines or in pilot tests. It endorses promoting minority candidates, establishing the obligation of the parties to guarantee candidacies for elective positions to young people, indigenous people, Afro-Mexicans, people of sexual diversity, migrants, and the disabled.
The vote of Mexicans residing abroad is also made more flexible, by allowing them to vote online not only with their voter identification card but also their passport or consular registration. Currently, voting abroad is done by land mail and online, but those interested must start the process months in advance.
It is also proposed to guarantee the vote of people who are in pretrial detention. In the last two elections, the INE has implemented pilot tests of this. Another new aspect is that the electoral officials take a ballot box to the homes of people with "a disability and in a state of prostration" so that they can vote.