AMLO vs. INE: first round for López Obrador; the second is missing

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his morenistas won the first round of the lawsuit against the National Electoral Institute (INE), after it decided to postpone the consultation to revoke the presidential mandate, arguing that it does not have sufficient funds to it.

On Wednesday, at 9:34 PM (Center), through a tweet, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) reported that its Recess Commission (in charge of the affairs of the Court when it is in recess ), made up of the ministers Margarita Ríos-Farjat and Yazmin Esquivel, “granted the suspension requested by the Chamber of Deputies of the Congress of the Union, so that the INE refrains from executing the agreement by which it intended to postpone any of the activities to the organization of the mandate revocation process “and ordered that” continue with the organization and development of all the activities of the mandate revocation process until its conclusion with the approved budget of 1503 million pesos, which constitutes an indicator of financial viability ”.

For the INE, the 1,503 million pesos are insufficient to carry out the consultation. That amount does not represent even half of the 3,830 million that it claims to need to do so. Only for the installation of 161,490 receiving tables, including the printing of materials, indelible ink, crayons and other items requires 1,471 million pesos; For the hiring of 32,451 electoral trainers, 5,451 electoral supervisors and technical personnel to visit 12 million people drawn and train 807,450 poll workers, it needs 1,213.3 million. Only these two concepts add 2,684.3 million pesos.

The SCJN ordered the INE to do something, “until its conclusion”, for which it supposedly does not have the necessary resources.

So is he going to be able to do it? No, because you don’t have the money to do it.

The Federal Mandate Revocation Law specifies on time everything that the INE is obliged to do before, during and after the revocation consultation. And doing so requires vast material, human and financial resources, something that sometimes seems to not go through the heads of our legislators when they approve a law or a spending budget.

Although the decision of the SCJN Recess Commission denies the INE to postpone the consultation and orders it to continue advancing in its work, the second round of the AMLO vs. INE lawsuit is pending: the constitutional controversy against the Federation’s Expenditure Budget 2022 that the Institute presented on December 7 last.

The suspension requested by the INE was denied by the Minister Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá because the consultation is a fact of uncertain realization that to be carried out requires that 3% of the people included in the Nominal List of Voters request it. Therefore, the Court cannot rule on the suspension of the budgetary effects because there is still no effect on the INE.

The SCJN will decide on this controversy as soon as it is announced that 3% of the voters’ signatures were collected or not. That will be the second round, with a reserved forecast.

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