Tens of thousands of Mexican people protested on Sunday against a reform of the electoral body approved by the ruling party in Congress, a change that according to its detractors goes against the democratic system ahead of the 2024 presidential elections in Mexico.
Under the slogan “My vote is not touched”, a crowd dressed in white and pink (institutional colors of the electoral body) filled a large part of the Zócalo, the country’s main public square of about 21,000 square meters, and several surrounding streets of the historic center of Mexico City.
The reform reduces the staff and budget of the National Electoral Institute (INE), the entity in charge of organizing the elections and which the country’s president, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accuses of costing public coffers a lot of money and of having tolerated fraud. in the past.
The demonstration was called by various political and civil organizations grouped in theNational Civic Front, contrary to López Obrador, who -according to the law- cannot stand for re-election. However, his party leads the voting preferences for the 2024 elections.
Ramón Cossío, former Supreme Court magistrate and main speaker at the event, accused the president of wanting to “appropriate the electoral system.” Cossío trusted that the Supreme Court will throw down the reform when the lawsuits that have been filed before that court fail.
“We trust them (the judges), in their democratic spirit, in the decision they will make to preserve the democratic life of the country,” said the former magistrate from a dais, whom the country’s president calls “corrupt and hypocritical,” said .
In response to this protest, López Obrador – whose popularity is around 60% – called on his followers to mobilize on March 18 on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the nationalization of oil in Mexico. The president had already disqualified the protest beforehand by pointing out that behind it is a group of “corrupt” who wants to return to power to “continue stealing.”
Neither the authorities nor the organizers reported how many people participated in the protests, which took place in various cities of the country, such as Guadalajara (west).
The opposition groups reject the modifications promoted by the first leftist president of Mexico and which were endorsed on February 22 by the Legislature. The autonomous INE, in charge of preparing and organizing the elections, ensures that the reform reduces its territorial structure by eliminating 300 district boards, which will cause one of the 32 states of the country -with 125 million inhabitants- to have a single person in charge from the electoral office.
These changes affect the updating and purification of the electoral roll (consisting of some 93 million voters), the entity noted in a document. Also, the personnel in charge of training the voting juries disappears and the ability to monitor electoral propaganda on radio and television is limited, he added.
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