Mexicans march against president's proposed election reform
An estimated 200,000 Mexicans marched Sunday against AMLO's plans to scupper the autonomy of the electoral institute in a country with a history of election chicanery
THOUSANDS MARCH FOR THE ELECTORAL INSTITUTE
“Racists”, “Classists”, “Cretins”. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador slapped those epithets on the thousands of Mexicans planning to march Sunday in defence of the National Electoral Institute (INE), which AMLO proposed to neuter with an overhaul being pushed through Congress.
Tens of thousands of protesters – perhaps hundreds of thousands – in fact marched from the Ángel de la Independencia in Mexico City to the Revolution Monument, demanding, “The INE be defended.” Marchers in more than two dozen other cities around the Republic took to the streets, too.
Speaking at the Revolution Monument, José Woldenberg the electoral institute’s president from 1996 to 2003 – who oversaw the 2000 election, which ended one-party rule in Mexico – told the told crowd:
“The major problem, the one that has brought us here, is that it forces us to take to the streets, the one that is at the center of public attention, is that the government wants to destroy a good part of what has been built."
“It’s necessary to insist on that because it means not only an aggression against the existing institutions, rather the possibility of carrying out our political life in a democratic way.
“Mexico cannot return to an electoral institution aligned with the government, incapable of guaranteeing the necessary impartiality of the entire electoral process. Our country does not deserve to return to the past because what has been built allows for authentic elections, the cornerstone of any democratic system.”
A more populist (and AMLO-controlled) electoral institute and political system
AMLO has proposed scrapping the INE and replacing it with an organization known as the National Elections and Consultations Institute (INEC) – a nod to the snap plebiscites he called on matters ranging cancelling the already-under-construction Mexico City airport to suspending construction on a partially built Constellation Brands Brewery in Mexicali to whether or not ex-presidents should be brought to trial for unspecified offences. (INE has showed little enthusiasm for the consultas, which attract scant turnout, as it lacks the budget to properly organize them.)
The president speaks of improving democracy with the new electoral institute – part of a broader electoral reform, which is being reviewed in Congress barely 19 months from the 2024 presidential elections. The reform proposes:
Replacing the INE with the INEC
Disappearing state-level electoral institutes, which would be absorbed the INE. The federal electoral tribunal – which is on the same level as the Supreme Court, but for electoral affairs – would take responsibility for the tasks of lower level tribunals.
Shrinking the INE board from 11 commissioners to seven commissioners, who would be elected by popular vote rather than the lower house of Congress.
Scrapping the 200 members of lower house and 32 senators elected through a proportional representation system (known as plurinominales), in which they are nominated to lists by their parties. This would reduce the lower house from 500 members to 300 members and the Senate from 128 members to 96 members (three per state).
Transferring the INE list of electors – used to issue voter identifications, without which no one can cast a ballot – to the interior ministry (which does not have nearly as comprehensive a system of national identification.)
Cutting the INE budget and bureaucracy.
Eliminate political party financing – in a system where parties depend almost exclusively on generous INE monies and do not carry out formal fundraising (though sources of illicit money are suspected of floating many campaigns.)
Not all of the proposals are original. The PRI has long wanted to eliminate plurinominales, which prior to AMLO’s MORENA party and its allies winning mega majorities in congress used to complain it performed strongly in the direct-election seats (like exist in the U.S. House of Representatives.) Parts of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) also disliked the system, which benefitted smaller rent-seeking parties like the so-called “Green” Party and supposedly communist-sympathizing Workers’ Party (PT) – even though analysts say the PAN benefits from having proportional representation.
The selection of commissioners in the lower house also generated discontent as the parties would divvy up the seats between them. On one of those occasions in 2003, the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) – once led by AMLO – abandoned the process, leading to it having no representation on the board in 2006, when AMLO alleged the election he narrowly lost had been rigged. (More on that below.)
Registered parties share 6.2 billion pesos ($321 million) in public money – a sum attracting rent-seekers – for which accountability is scant. The large sum is supposed to discourage candidates from seeking out alternative sources of funding (read: donations from licit and illicit sources.)
An electoral reform in 2007 also gave political parties exclusive access to radio and TV ads free of charge – effectively banning private attacks ads or any third-party advertising for or against a candidate. (It followed the 2006 election, when ads from the PAN calling AMLO, “A danger for Mexico” and comparing him to Hugo Chávez sunk his campaign.
A popular and credible institution
The role of the INE – founded in 1990 as the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) – played a key role in facilitating the end of 71 years of consecutive rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors. It was formed after repeated electoral frauds, but most notoriously the 1988 vote, when the left-wing candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (son of the revered former president Lázaro Cárdenas) led the early tallies – only to see the lead disappear after a mysterious computer failure in the interior ministry.
The IFE was formed as an autonomous agency, which was tasked with organizing elections. Analysts say it benefitted from overseeing a relatively smooth transition from PRI to PAN rule in 2000 as Vicente Fox won the election by a sold margin and the then-PRI president Ernesto Zedillo was committed to a democratic transition.
Polls consistently ranked the IFE/INE as one of the country’s most trustworthy institutions – though support has slipped with AMLO’s repeated attacks on the institute since losing in 2006. His administration made hay of an INE telephone poll showing 52% support for AMLO’s plans to turn the INE into the INEC.
Voter ID built confidence in the IFE/IFE
Part of the INE’s strong approval rating is based on the voter credential carried by most Mexicans, which has become the country’s preferred form of identification – demanded by banks, bars and public institutions. Showing the credential is imperative for casting ballot as poll workers turn away anyone lacking the INE identification (which can be obtained for free with a birth certificate and proof of address – such as a utility bill – from one 300 INE service centres around the country.)
Analysts say the credential, which government ministries have tried unsuccessfully to replicate – has gained acceptance because of perceptions the INE truly is an autonomous agency, which spends a large part of its budget maintaining an up-to-date voter roll in a country where the dead and other fictions individuals used to vote early and often. Part of AMLO’s reform would take the INE identification system and give it to the interior ministry – the secretary of which is the president’s main political operator in dealing with Congress and other levels of government.
“It’s a very important prop for support of that institution,” Federico Estévez, political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, told USA Today in 2012. “What people really know about (the electoral institute) is the card.”
One of the marchers at the pro-INE protest on Sunday drew enormous ridicule for saying as much. Infobae posted a video of the marcher stating she was protesting “because it is an official identification where I defend my right to be a Mexican citizen, that’s why I’m here because it’s not right for him [the president] to take it away.”
Just 10,000 protestors?
Narratives over protests in Mexico City often prove controversial. The local government regularly inflated estimates on the attendance of AMLO rallies, while the federal government (which was previously responsible for public security in the capital prior to 2017) would downplay the numbers. Mexico’s city’s government secretary put the figure at the pro-INE march at 10,000 – a laughable figure, which was later revised upward to 60,000 participants. Organizers put the figure at more than 200,000 – not including other cities.
But AMLO took the protests as an affront – no surprise: it drew from the middle classes, which he has scorned as “aspirational” and responded by voting against him in the wealthier, western parts of Mexico City – prying the assembly from the left’s grasp since its first elections in 1997.
The march, according to columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio of Eje Central, may rank as one of the biggest of the last 20 years – perhaps trailing the protests against an attempt to disqualify AMLO from the 2006 election for violating a court order while serving as Mexico City mayor and a 2004 for security. (Marches to demand action on kidnapping in 2008 and to protest the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa teacher trainees in 2014 also drew massive numbers.)
AMLO derided the 2004 marcher as pirruris (rich kids). The Sunday march took on a similar flavour as the middle classes turned out. Riva Palacio noted:
“The march in Mexico City, where hundreds of thousands took to the streets …. shows the first signs that the country’s capital belongs to the opposition. The attendance reflects the increasing rejection of López Obrador and his candidate [for 2024] Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City mayor.
“(The president’s) reaction to the march yesterday proved that he lacks arguments and that the only strategy he has to avoid losing power is to deepen the national division based on his only offer, that there be continuity without change in 2024.”
A political ‘striptease’ of conservatism in Mexico
At his morning press conference on Monday, AMLO carried on complaining in his response to a question on the pro-INE march for more than 30 minutes. He scorned the protesters as phoney democrats, resorting to name-calling and pointing to old political opponents in attendance with checkered political pasts (while ignoring the unpresentable people in his one administration, including with Manuel Bartlett, the then-interior minister who oversaw the 1988 election fraud.) He chortled:
“It was a political striptease of conservatism in Mexico.”
But he was just getting warmed up. The president then played the race card – as he’s wont to do from time to time – saying of the pro-INE marchers:
“The INE was an excuse, a flag for them. But at the bottom of this, those protesting did it against the transformation that’s happening in the country. They did it to reclaim the privileges they had prior to the government that I represent. They did it to favour corruption, did it to favour racism, did it to favour classism, discrimination. That’s at the bottom of this.”
“The march was important. It was sort of public, political striptease of conservatism in Mexico,” AMLO continued, using his favourite epithet for political opponents: conservative.
Revenge for (supposedly stolen) 2006 election
Analysts have pointed out that AMLO’s attack on the electoral institute follows his winning the 2018 election with 53 percent of the vote and his party and its allies claiming majorities in Congress – but not big enough to change the constitution (necessary for the electoral reform. (It’s thought the president will start twisting arms and threatening lawmakers with histories of corruption – usually not an issue so long as they’re on his side.) Past reforms of the IFE and INE were promoted by the opposition, including AMLO former partisans in the PRD, who pushed measures to end the sales of political ads on radio and TV after feeling the then-powerful Televisa network proved too influential. (The loss of political ads cut into Televisa’s revenues.")
But AMLO often relitigates the 2006 election, which he lost by less than a percentage point to Felipe Calderón and never conceded. He blamed the IFE (as the INE was known at the time) for failing to stop supposed fraud – the evidence for which never surfaced. He also demanded a total recount, which was prohibited at the time under election law. (Polling stations are run by citizens selected randomly and trained by the INE. They operate the polling station, then count the votes and publish an acta [document] listing the official results.)
He speaks of 2006 much like former president Donald Trump speaks of 2020. Both have rallied supporters to protest – with AMLO’s supporters camping out on the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard in central Mexico City for six weeks and his partisans in Congress attempting to physically impede Calderón taking the oath of office. AMLO declined to recognize Biden’s electoral victory until mid-December 2020, saying he would not repeat the process of world leaders endorsing close elections (such as 2006) until all appeals were settled. That policy hasn’t stopped him from quickly expressing support for uncertified results in Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia and other countries whose leaders he supports.
The “stolen” 2006 election serves as the foundational myth for AMLO and his MORENA party (called a “movement” by supporters.”) Political science professor Marcela Ávila-Eggleton wrote in the newspaper El Universal Querétaro:
“López Obrador personifies the eternal victim of electoral institutions since the then-Federal District Electoral Institute tried to deny his registration as contender for the head of the D.F. government in 2000 for not meeting the residency requirements. The 2006 electoral fraud is the foundational myth of MORENA, which is why President López obrador finds it not only painful, but electorally costly to abandon it.”
AYOTZINAPA INVESTIGATION UNRAVELS – AGAIN
In one of AMLO’s first acts as president, he created a truth commission to investigate the case of 43 teacher trainees attacked and disappeared by cops acting in cahoots with drug cartels in 2014. He also appointed a special prosecutor, who worked apart from the commission in the federal prosecutor’s office – an supposedly autonomous institutions, which often fails to act as such. The commission released a blockbuster report in August, asserting authorities at all levels of government either participated in the crime or failed to intervene. It called the atrocity: a state crime. The report also repudiated a previous investigation colloquially known as “the historic truth,” which is was already discredited, but the commission claimed was shoddy and dependent on torture and invented evidence.
Now the truth commission is fending off similar accusations of shoddiness and expedience as a panel of outside experts and comments from the commission chairman himself to The New York Times undermine the worthiness of the latest investigation.
The team of outside experience known as the GIEI – sponsored by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission – has accompanied the investigation from nearly the start (and was torpedoed by the authors of the “historic truth” report – people considered close with then-president Enrique Peña Nieto – in 2016.) The five GIEI experts noted a troubling inconsistency in a Sept. 29 press conference: screen shots of WhatsApp messages involving authorities and suspects obtained by the truth commission failed to match other intercepted communications.
One of the five GIEI investigators said at an Oct. 31 press conference: “several messages were sent on dates after the generation of the screenshots. In other words, the date of images’ generation is prior to the dates of the messages being created and sent.” Another investigator, Carlos Berenstain, said:
“In an attempt to speed up the results of the case without due investigative measures to be taken, it has led to a crisis situation … in the independence and confidence in the results of the investigation.”
The screen shots of the messages, according to the Times, purportedly told of the students’ bodies being dismembered and disposed of. Human rights secretary Alejandro Encinas – head of the truth commission – told the Times that he failed to pass along the screenshots to the federal prosecutor’s office (FGR) out of fear the images would be leaked. He also wanted to produce a “timely” report.
New president, same expedience
Encinas, an avuncular figure, former member of Mexico’s communist party and the interim mayor of Mexico City after AMLO left office in July 2005 to unsuccessfully run for president, told the Times that the president wanted to see results in the investigation.
He recalled AMLO saying, “We have two years left in the government, we have to show results, and the attorney general’s office has to prosecute.”
Encinas also acknowledged travelling to Israel earlier this year to meet with Tomás Zerón – the former head of Mexico’s investigative agency, who is applying for asylum after being accused in Mexico of torture and planting evidence. The Times obtained a recording of their three-hour meeting, in which Encinas is heard pleading for information and promising the “president’s support” for Zerón’s legal situation. (Mexico and Israel don’t have an extradition treaty and the latter has showed little haste in handling requests for Zerón’s extradition due to displeasure with the former voting against it in the UN on the Palestinian issue, according to the Times.)
For his part, AMLO backed Encinas unconditionally, while blasting the Times and drifting into the familiar realm of conspiracy.
Encinas cried conspiracy, too. Then he claimed the AMLO administration was shaking up “the old structures,” which was provoking a backlash. “There’s a reaction because there are concrete actions and simulations are being left behind.” Analysts rejected Encinas’s claims – with human rights activist Jacobo Dayán, pointing to pressure from AMLO himself to produce a report. He wrote in Animal Politico:
“Encinas’s justification is regrettable: ‘In all investigations there are hits and misses.’ He could start by recognizing that the lack of independence in these commissions eliminated the possibility of carrying them out correctly.
“Encinas made public his report without showing it to the victims’ families or the GIEI. He also went behind the back of the special prosecutor in the case. The motive was clear in the [NYT] report: the president demanded immediate results. The government agenda was put ahead of the truth and justice.
“Instead of guaranteeing independence, the special prosecutor’s replacement is a person close to the president. … The person ruining the process is López Obrador – not wanting to lose political control and Alejandro Encinas lent himself to this.”
Other analysts were quick to point out that the old structures undermining Encinas’ investigation have received unconditional support from the president: the Defence Secretariat (SEDENA) and federal prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero.
Lawyers for the Ayotzinapa students’ families and GIEI accuse both of undermining the investigation. (Previous newsletters have detailed this point.) Special prosecutor Omar Gómez Trejo resigned in October after 21 arrest warrants – including some issued for soldiers – were mysteriously withdrawn by the FGR.
Gómez Trejo has said little since resigning, though he said at a conference in the United States, according to the newsweekly Proceso, that his office had “evidence” of “the cooptation of the Mexican state.” He continued:
We really understand why the disappearance of the students had a strong link with organized crime: they used this fact as a form of control of the region. We issued 83 arrest warrants and among them at least 20 members of the Mexican army.
AMLO VISITS ‘EL CHAPO’S’ HOMETOWN FOR THE FOURTH TIME
AMLO has never had a cross word for Mexican drug cartels and, at times, he’s spoken respectfully toward them – especially the Sinaloa Cartel and its imprisoned former kingpin, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The president has also showed a special interest in Guzmán’s home municipality of Badiraguato, visiting it on multiple occasions to announce social spending and inspect construction on a highway through the rugged Sierra Madre Mountains (which will connect long-isolated communities with histories in the illegal drugs business.)
He also broke with social-distancing protocols to greet El Chapo’s mother in March 2020. On another trip through the region over the summer, journalists travelling with the president were stopped at checkpoints manned by presumed narco gunmen and questioned.
AMLO visited for the fourth time in late October, prompting questions in the chattering classes over AMLO’s special interest in the municipality – which has a population of barely 26,500 souls.
AMLO took exception to the questions and singled out columnist Sergio Sarmiento of the newspaper Reforma, whose tweet on the president’s interest in Badiraguato went viral. He said at this morning press conference:
“There’s a social media campaign that says I go to Sinaloa, to Badiraguato, to meet with members of the Sinaloa Cartel. Well, no. I go to Sinaloa because it’s a state with good people, hard-working people, who should not be stigmatized.”
“Ah, ‘He greeted this lady, the mother.’ On one of my visits the lady arrived and I greeted her and would do it again because I respect the elderly, I respect any person and my conscience is quiet. But if there had been proof of an agreement [with a cartel] … I will resign the presidency because what I esteem most in my life is my honesty.”
AMLO subsequently announced a fifth trip to Sinaloa – where the Sinaloa Cartel mobilized in favour his MORENA party prior to the 2021 midterms and state elections – this time to inaugurate the highway through the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Badiraguato mayor announces ‘narco’ museum
No sooner had AMLO denied any untoward motives for his trips to Badiraguato than the MORENA mayor of the municipality made national headlines by announcing the possible construction of a museum dedicated to the history of narcotics trafficking.
Mayor José Paz López said a building was under construction in Badiraguato, though no one was sure yet would be housed in the 15-million-peso edifice. But he said in a video posted to social media by Noticiero Altavoz:
“We are not closed to any topic. If it is going to be for the benefit of the municipality of Badiraguato to have a ‘narco’ museum, that’s something the government will push for.
“We cannot deny our history. We have to recognized it and we will work on this as a base. It’s possible that we could have a narcotics trafficking museum, we’re not closed to any subject, we’re going to listen to all subjects.”
The mayor later backed away from his proposal after prominent MORENA members, including the Sinaloa state governor, shot down the idea.
NO MORE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME IN MEXICO
Mexico turned back the clocks October 30 for the final time as the country’s Congress voted to eliminate Daylight Savings Time. The president presented polling from the interior ministry, claiming 71% of Mexico disliked Daylight Savings Time. Health secretary Jorge Alcocer said Mexico was returning to “God’s watch.”
Some in Mexico couldn’t resist noting that the president’s entire administration has been about turning back the clock – not just scrapping Daylight Savings Time – with little of his agenda being forward-looking. (See the above political cartoon.)